"I hope your ladyship is pleased with the game."
"Oh dear, yes! very entertaining indeed.
A very odd game.
I do not know what it is all about.
I am never to see my cards; and Mr. Crawford does all the rest."
"Bertram," said Crawford, some time afterwards, taking the opportunity of a little languor in the game,
"I have never told you what happened to me yesterday in my ride home."
They had been hunting together, and were in the midst of a good run, and at some distance from Mansfield, when his horse being found to have flung a shoe, Henry Crawford had been obliged to give up, and make the best of his way back.
"I told you I lost my way after passing that old farmhouse with the yew-trees, because I can never bear to ask; but I have not told you that, with my usual luck - for I never do wrong without gaining by it - I found myself in due time in the very place which I had a curiosity to see.
I was suddenly, upon turning the corner of a steepish downy field, in the midst of a retired little village between gently rising hills; a small stream before me to be forded, a church standing on a sort of knoll to my right - which church was strikingly large and handsome for the place, and not a gentleman or half a gentleman's house to be seen excepting one - to be presumed the Parsonage - within a stone's throw of the said knoll and church.
I found myself, in short, in Thornton Lacey."
"It sounds like it," said Edmund; "but which way did you turn after passing Sewell's farm?"
"I answer no such irrelevant and insidious questions; though were I to answer all that you could put in the course of an hour, you would never be able to prove that it was not Thornton Lacey - for such it certainly was."
"You inquired, then?"
"No, I never inquire.
But I told a man mending a hedge that it was Thornton Lacey, and he agreed to it."
"You have a good memory.
I had forgotten having ever told you half so much of the place."
Thornton Lacey was the name of his impending living, as Miss Crawford well knew; and her interest in a negotiation for William Price's knave increased.
"Well," continued Edmund, "and how did you like what you saw?"
"Very much indeed.
You are a lucky fellow.
There will be work for five summers at least before the place is liveable."
"No, no, not so bad as that.
The farmyard must be moved, I grant you; but I am not aware of anything else.
The house is by no means bad, and when the yard is removed, there may be a very tolerable approach to it."
"The farmyard must be cleared away entirely, and planted up to shut out the blacksmith's shop.
The house must be turned to front the east instead of the north - the entrance and principal rooms, I mean, must be on that side, where the view is really very pretty; I am sure it may be done.
And there must be your approach, through what is at present the garden.
You must make a new garden at what is now the back of the house; which will be giving it the best aspect in the world, sloping to the south-east.
The ground seems precisely formed for it.
I rode fifty yards up the lane, between the church and the house, in order to look about me; and saw how it might all be.
Nothing can be easier.
The meadows beyond what will be the garden, as well as what now is, sweeping round from the lane I stood in to the north-east, that is, to the principal road through the village, must be all laid together, of course; very pretty meadows they are, finely sprinkled with timber.
They belong to the living, I suppose; if not, you must purchase them.
Then the stream - something must be done with the stream; but I could not quite determine what.
I had two or three ideas."
"And I have two or three ideas also," said Edmund, "and one of them is, that very little of your plan for Thornton Lacey will ever be put in practice.
I must be satisfied with rather less ornament and beauty.
I think the house and premises may be made comfortable, and given the air of a gentleman's residence, without any very heavy expense, and that must suffice me; and, I hope, may suffice all who care about me."
Miss Crawford, a little suspicious and resentful of a certain tone of voice, and a certain half-look attending the last expression of his hope, made a hasty finish of her dealings with William Price; and securing his knave at an exorbitant rate, exclaimed,
"There, I will stake my last like a woman of spirit.
No cold prudence for me.
I am not born to sit still and do nothing.
If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving for it."
The game was hers, and only did not pay her for what she had given to secure it.
Another deal proceeded, and Crawford began again about Thornton Lacey.
"My plan may not be the best possible: I had not many minutes to form it in; but you must do a good deal.
The place deserves it, and you will find yourself not satisfied with much less than it is capable of. (Excuse me, your ladyship must not see your cards. There, let them lie just before you.) The place deserves it, Bertram.
You talk of giving it the air of a gentleman's residence.