No cold prudence for me.
I am not born to sit still and do nothing. If I lose
the game, it shall not be from not striving for it."
The game was hers, and only did not pay her for what
she had given to secure it. Another deal proceeded,
and Crawford began again about Thornton Lacey.
"My plan may not be the best possible: I had not many
minutes to form it in; but you must do a good deal.
The place deserves it, and you will find yourself not
satisfied with much less than it is capable of. (Excuse me,
your ladyship must not see your cards. There, let them
lie just before you.) The place deserves it, Bertram.
You talk of giving it the air of a gentleman's residence.
_That_ will be done by the removal of the farmyard;
for, independent of that terrible nuisance, I never saw
a house of the kind which had in itself so much the air
of a gentleman's residence, so much the look of a something
above a mere parsonage-house--above the expenditure of a few
hundreds a year. It is not a scrambling collection of low
single rooms, with as many roofs as windows; it is not
cramped into the vulgar compactness of a square farmhouse:
it is a solid, roomy, mansion-like looking house, such as one
might suppose a respectable old country family had lived
in from generation to generation, through two centuries
at least, and were now spending from two to three thousand
a year in.
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