BRUNTSEA It would be unfair to Major Hockin to take him for an extravagant man or a self-indulgent one because of the good dinner he had ordered, and his eagerness to sit down to it.

Through all the best years of his life he had been most frugal, abstemious, and self-denying, grudging every penny of his own expense, but sparing none for his family.

And now, when he found himself so much better off, with more income and less outlay, he could not be blamed for enjoying good things with the wholesome zest of abstinence.
For, coming to the point, and going well into the matter, the Major had discovered that the "little property" left to him, and which he was come to see to, really was quite a fine estate for any one who knew how to manage it, and would not spare courage and diligence.

And of these two qualities he had such abundance that, without any outlet, they might have turned him sour.
The property lately devised to him by his cousin, Sir Rufus Hockin, had long been far more plague than profit to that idle baronet.

Sir Rufus hated all exertion, yet could not comfortably put up with the only alternative--extortion.