The thing should be done. She understood
how great a thing it was for him to do. "The two centre rooms!" he said,
with an almost tragic air. Then he sent for her the next day, and told
her that, on farther considerations, he had determined to add in the
dressing-room.
The whole parish felt the effect. It was not so much that the parish was
struck by the expenditure proposed,--because the squire was known to be a
man who had not for years spent all his income,--but that he had given
way so far on behalf of a nephew whom he had lately been so anxious to
disinherit. Rumor had already reached Buntingford of what the squire had
intended to do on the receipt of his own wife,--rumors which had of
course since faded away into nothing. It had been positively notified to
Buntingford that there should be really a new carpet and new curtains in
the drawing-room. Miss Thoroughbung had been known to have declared at
the brewery that the whole thing should be done before she had been
there twelve months.
"He shall go the whole hog," she had said. And there had been a little
bet about it between her and her brother, who entertained an idea that
Mr. Prosper was an obstinate man. And Joe had brought tidings of the bet
to the parsonage, so that there had been much commotion on the subject.
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