“There is certainly no necessity for pineries and forcing-houses. Your niece is not likely to want grapes in January, or camellias in the early autumn. As little does she need sixteen carriage-horses and a stable full of hunters.”
“They are to be sold off next week. Mary herself said that she only wanted two saddle-horses and the pony for the phaeton.”
“Quite sufficient, I should say, for a young lady.”
“I 'm sure she 'd have liked to have kept the harriers—”
“A pack of hounds! I really never heard the like!”
“Poor Molly! It was her greatest pleasure,—I may say her only amusement in life. But she would n't hear of keeping them; and when Repton tried to persuade her—”
“Repton's an old fool,—he's worse; he's downright dishonest,—for he actually proposed my paying my maids out of my miserable pittance of eight hundred a year, and at the same moment suggests your niece retaining a pack of foxhounds!”
“Harriers, my Lady.”
“I don't care what they 're called. It is too insolent.”
“You may rely upon one thing,” said Martin, with more firmness than he had hitherto used, “there will be nothing of extravagance in Mary's personal expenditure. If ever there was a girl indifferent to all the claims of self, she is that one.”