Manchurian Books

Your Reverence has a right to old Dobbin, and nobody else shall
have him. And as to your rents, as you never was a bad landlord in the
main, I'll try if I can't now and then send you a trifle; for I don't
see that these new people have any right to what they take."
"Hush, hush," said Dame Humphreys, "His Reverence yesterday bade us
behave well, and do our duty to every body."
"So I will," returned Humphreys; "but I hate your new laws, and your
taxing men, and your arrays and assessments, which take your horses out
of your team, and your money out of your pocket, and nobody knows what
for. I believe Master Davies is no better than a worldling, for he
talked yesterday about raising my rent, and if that's his humour, I'll
be even with him; for I'll go and hear Priggins directly."
"Priggins," said one of the by-standers, "is a fine man, with a good
voice, and tolerable action; but he is nothing to the serjeant-major of
Sir William Brureton's rangers, who preached at the drum-head at Bolton,
and made the whole town declare against Lord Derby.


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