"Oh! you mean poverty. Then, why don't you sell the old place?"
"It would kill my father to think of it."
"But it would not have so dreadful an effect on you? I know you could get it sold if you like."
"An old impudent fellow of the name of Jeeks wishes to force us into a sale. I will see him and all his race at the bottom of the Red Sea first."
"Would you sell it then?" she said.
"No—but, fair Lucy Ashton, why do you ask?"
"Because if you parted with one brick of the old house, one blade of grass of the old park, one leaf of one old tree in the old wood, our acquaintance would end as rapidly as it began."
"Then it shall suffer no decay," I said, and took her hand, which she held out to me with honest warmth; "and now let me find out, if I can, who it is that gives me such admirable advice. I called on Mr Dobble yesterday."
"He told you a great many things, by the by, did he?" she said.
"You know him, I see, and he knows you." As I said this, I looked with the air of a man who has discovered a portentous secret; but she bore my look with the same celestial open smile as ever.