A man apparently of curious energy and character, considering his origin, he had dropped the E from his name, and--though he continued the family tradition so far as to marry a Fleeming of Worcestershire, to be paternal to his workmen, to be known as Squire, and to bring his children up in the older Moreton 'niceness'-- he had yet managed to make his ploughs quite celebrated, to found a little town, and die still handsome and clean-shaved at the age of sixty-six.

Of his four sons, only two could be found sufficiently without the E to go on making ploughs.

Stanley's grandfather, Stuart Morton, indeed, had tried hard, but in the end had reverted to the congenital instinct for being just a Moreton.

An extremely amiable man, he took to wandering with his family, and died in France, leaving one daughter--Frances, Stanley's mother--and three sons, one of whom, absorbed in horses, wandered to Australia and was killed by falling from them; one of whom, a soldier, wandered to India, and the embraces of a snake; and one of whom wandered into the embraces of the Holy Roman Church.
The Morton Plough Works were dry and dwindling when Stanley's father, seeking an opening for his son, put him and money into them.

From that moment they had never looked back, and now brought Stanley, the sole proprietor, an income of full fifteen thousand pounds a year.