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“Dear me! how far apart they are set! My gardener told me this morning that asparagus grows very thinly in this part of the world. How thinly clergymen grow also down here — in one sense,” he added politely, for the vicar was stout.

“We were looking out of the window — we amused ourselves that way before you came — and your view is certainly the very best anywhere round this side; your view of the lake and the fells — what mountains they are, Sir Bale!”

“‘Pon my soul, they are! I wish I could blow them asunder with a charge of duck-shot, and I shouldn’t be stifled by them long. But I suppose, as we can’t get rid of them, the next best thing is to admire them. We are pretty well married to them, and there is no use in quarrelling.”

“I know you don’t think so, Sir Bale, ha, ha, ha! You wouldn’t take a good deal and spoil Mardykes Hall.”

“You can’t get a mouthful or air, or see the sun of a morning, for those frightful mountains,” he said with a peevish frown at them.

“Well, the lake at all events — that you must admire, Sir Bale?”