Indeed, the threatened
invasion of the San Gregorio by Japanese rendered imperative an
immediate decision to that effect. He was the first of an ancient
lineage who had even dreamed of progress; he _had_ progressed, and he
could never, by any possibility, afford to retrograde.
The Farrels had never challenged competition. They had been content to
make their broad acres pay a sum sufficient to meet operating-expenses
and the interest-charges on the ancient mortgage, meanwhile supporting
themselves in all the ease and comfort of their class by nibbling at
their principal. Just how far his ancestors had nibbled, the last of
the Farrels was not fully informed, but he was young and optimistic,
and believed that, with proper management and the application of modern
ranching principles, he would succeed, by the time he was fifty, in
saving this principality intact for those who might come after him, for
it was not a part of his life plan to die childless--now that the war
was over and he out of it practically with a whole skin. This aspect
of his future he considered as the train rolled into the Southland. He
was twenty-eight years old, and he had never been in love, although,
since his twenty-first birthday, his father and Don Juan Sepulvida, of
the Rancho Carpajo, had planned a merger of their involved estates
through the simple medium of a merger of their families.
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