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 “Therefore he must be wealthy, eh?”

“Therefore he must have plenty to do with his wealth: and in these times would be about as likely to think of drawing money from the business to give dowries to his daughters, as I should be to dream of pulling down the cottage there, and constructing on its ruins a house as large as Fieldhead.”

“Do you know what I heard, Moore, the other day?”

“No: perhaps that I was about to effect some such change. Your Briarfield gossips are capable of saying that or sillier things.”

“That you were going to take Fieldhead on a lease—I thought it looked a dismal place, by-the-by, to-night, as I passed it—and that it was your intention to settle a Miss Sykes there as mistress; to be married, in short, ha! ha! Now, which is it? Dora—I am sure; you said she was the handsomest.”

“I wonder how often it has been settled that I was to be married since I came to Briarfield! They have assigned me every marriageable single woman by turns in the district. Now it was the two Misses Wynns—first the dark, then the light one. Now the red-haired Miss Armitage, then the mature Ann Pearson; at present you throw on my shoulders all the tribe of the Misses Sykes. On what grounds this gossip rests, God knows. I visit nowhere—I seek female society about as assiduously as you do, Mr. Malone; if ever I go to Whinbury, it is only to give Sykes or Pearson a call in their counting-house, where