His Grace — page 27: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HIS GRACE. 21 natural desire to get all the fun that he could for his money, and I gathered that, what with yachting, deer- stalking, and the claims of London society, he would not spend more than three or four months of the year at his ancestral castle. ‘When I am at Hurstbourne, though, I shall make it lively for you,” he added encouragingly, “and when you're alone—well, you'll have the neighbors, and I daresay there will be work enough to keep you busy for a few hours every day, and in the winter you ought to get plenty of sport. Anyhow, you can but give the plan a trial and drop it if it doesn’t suit you.” The plan was quite certain to suit me better than any other that could have been devised on my behalf, and I am sure he knew that, or he would never have asked me to undertake it. I said as much to him when we parted; but he scouted the idea of my having any- thing to thank him for, protesting loudly that the obligation was all the other way. So, as there was not much more to be said, and as he apparently had a great many engagements, I left him, promising to let him hear from me as soon as I should have taken up my abode at Hurstbourne Castle, and the same afternoon I journeyed down to Essex, in order to inform my mother of the change which had occurred in my fortunes. My mother, I should mention, still lived in the neigh-. borhood where we had been accustomed to reign supreme in the days of our prosperity. When the crash came, and when my father, by good luck, had found an immediate purchaser for Fern Hill in Lady Deverell, we had gone up to London for atime; but after his death my mother, having no ties elsewhere, had thought it best to return tothe old county, and there she and my Gomicboo cS ( Gi @) m