brother would have nothing to say the soup would be sent round in a most manner wine drank without any or agreeable trifling and the cut up without supplying one pleasant anecdote of any former or a single entertaining story about my friend such a one she must try to find amusement in what was passing at the upper end of the table and in observing mr who was now making his appearance at for the first time since tlie arrival he had been visiting a in a neighbouring county and that friend having recently had his grounds laid out by an mr was returned with his head full of the subject and very eager to be improving his own place in the same way and though not saying much to the purpose could talk of nothing else the subject had been already handled in the drawing room it was revived in the dining parlour miss s attention and opinion was evidently his chief aim and though her showed rather conscious superiority than any solicitude to oblige him the of court and the ideas attached to it gave her a feeling of complacency which prevented her from being very i wish you could see said he it is the most complete i never saw a place so altered in my life i told smith i did not know where i was the approach now is one of the finest things in the country you see the house in the most surprising manner i declare when i got back to yesterday it looked like a prison � quite a dismal old prison oh for shame cried mrs a prison indeed court is the noblest old place in the world it wants improvement ma am beyond any thing i never saw a place that wanted so much improvement in my life and it is so forlorn that i do not know what can be done with it no wonder that mr should think so at present said mrs grant to mrs with a smile but depend upon it will have every improvement in time which his heart can desire i must try to do something with it said mr rush park worth but i do not know what i hope i shall have some good friend to help me your best friend upon such an occasion said miss calmly would be mr i imagine that is what i was thinking of as he has done so well by smith i think i had better have him at once his terms are five guineas a day well and if they were ten cried mrs i m sure you need not regard it the expense need not be any if i were you i should not think of the expense i would have every thing done in the best style and made as nice as possible such a place as court deserves every thing that taste and money cm do you have space to work upon there and grounds that will well reward you for my own part if i had lay thing within the part of the size of i should be always planting and improving for naturally i am excessively fond of it it would be too ridiculous for me to attempt any thing where i am now with my little half acre it would be quite a but if i had more room i should take a prodigious delight in improving and planting we did a vast deal in that way at the we made it quite a different place from what it was when we first had it you young ones do not remember much about it perhaps but if dear sir thomas were here he could tell you what improvements we made and a great deal more would have been done but for poor mr s sad state of health he could hardly ever get out poor man to enjoy any thing and that me from doing several things that sir thomas and i used to talk of if it had not been for that we should have carried on the garden wall and made the plantation to shut out the churchyard just as dr grant has done we were always doing something as it was it was only the spring before mr s death that we put in the against the stable wall which is now grown such a noble tree and getting to such perfection sir addressing herself then to dr grant the tree well beyond a doubt madam replied dr grant the soil ia good and i never � f v man park oat that the fruit should so little worth the trouble of gathering sir it is a park we bought it as a park and it cost us � that is it was a present from sir thomas but i saw the bill and i know it cost seven shillings and was charged as a park you were imposed on ma am replied dr grant these potatoes have as much the of a park as the fruit from that tree it is an fruit at the best but a good is which none from my garden are the truth is ma am said mrs grant pretending to whisper across the table to mrs that dr grant hardly knows what the natural taste of our is he is scarcely ever indulged with one for it is so valuable a fruit with a little assistance and ours is such a remarkably large fair sort that what with early and preserves my cook to get them all mrs who had begun to was appeased and for a little while other subjects took place of the improvements of dr grant and mrs were seldom good friends their acquaintance had begun in and their habits were totally after a short interruption mr began again smith s place is the admiration of all the and it was a mere nothing 