like grievances, and make me think the
weather most unseasonably close.«
    »The sweets of housekeeping in a country village!« said Miss Crawford
archly. »Commend me to the nurseryman and the poulterer.«
    »My dear child, commend Dr. Grant to the deanery of Westminster or St.
Paul's, and I should be as glad of your nurseryman and poulterer as you could
be. But we have no such people in Mansfield. What would you have me do?«
    »Oh! you can do nothing but what you do already; be plagued very often and
never lose your temper.«
    »Thank you - but there is no escaping these little vexations, Mary, live
where we may; and when you are settled in town and I come to see you, I dare say
I shall find you with yours, in spite of the nurseryman and the poulterer - or
perhaps on their very account. Their remoteness and unpunctuality, or their
exorbitant charges and frauds will be drawing forth bitter lamentations.«
    »I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel any thing of the sort. A large
income is the best recipé for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure
all the myrtle and turkey part of it.«
    »You intend to be very rich,« said Edmund, with a look which, to Fanny's
eye, had a great deal of serious meaning.
    »To be sure. Do not you? - Do not we all?«
    »I cannot intend any thing which it must be so completely beyond my power to
command. Miss Crawford may chuse her degree of wealth. She has only to fix on
her number of thousands a year, and there can be no doubt of their coming. My
intentions are only not to be poor.«
    »By moderation and economy, and bringing down your wants to your income, and
all that. I understand you - and a very proper plan it is for a person at your
time of life, with such limited means and indifferent connections. - What can
you want but a decent maintenance? You have not much time before you; and your
relations are in no situation to do any thing for you, or to mortify you by the
contrast of their own wealth and consequence. Be honest and poor, by all means -
but I shall not envy you; I do not much think I shall even respect you. I have a
much greater respect for those that are honest and rich.«
    »Your degree of respect for honesty, rich or poor, is precisely