The things we do!

There was little Hennie, who was sixteen, and
Biddy, who was fourteen, and Adelaide, and who knows how many more? How
could she refuse a young man, not very agreeable it is true, nor
particularly amiable, nor of good birth, at least on his father's side,
but otherwise eligible, and heir to so many thousands a year? The
Newcomes, on their side, think it a desirable match. Barnes, it must be
confessed, is growing rather selfish, and has some bachelor ways which a
wife will reform. Lady Kew is strongly for the match. With her own family
interest, Lord Steyne and Lord Kew, her nephews, and Barnes's own
father-in-law, Lord Dorking, in the Peers, why shall not the Newcomes sit
there too, and resume the old seat which all the world knows they had in
the time of Richard III.? Barnes and his father had got up quite a belief
about a Newcome killed at Bosworth, along with King Richard, and hated
Henry VII. as an enemy of their noble race. So all the parties were
pretty well agreed.


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