The talking took longer. It began with the estate, because that was what was in front of them. And Hannah discovered inside a fortnight that Nicholas Ware would talk about drainage and rents and the state of the North Road with a fluency and an interest that he brought to absolutely nothing else, and that he had not had one person to talk to about any of it in eight years who was not being paid. His agent was paid. Mrs. Trant was paid. The four men he dined with twice a year in the town were pleasant and careful, and had been being pleasant and careful since about the second year.
And Hannah Sedge had kept a house for nine years, and could read a set of accounts, and asked in about the third week of those dinners a question about the tithe on the marshland that made him put down his knife.
"Where did you get that?"
"Out of the book on the shelf behind you. And I have got about four more, and one of them is going to make you extremely cross."
"Ask it."
"You are letting the two farms on the low ground at the same rent as the high," said Hannah Sedge. "And they have not been worth the same since the drainage went, and I have looked at nine years of it, and you have lost about a hundred and forty pounds by being fair to two men who have not once mentioned it to you."
Nicholas Ware looked at his wife across the estate room table. "How long have you known that?" he said.
"About a fortnight."
"And you have said nothing for a fortnight?"