We never can be popular here."
"We don't want to be popular here. When we have refurnished the house,
we will bring our company from Oxford and London and elsewhere. We will
have fine dinners and balls, hunting-parties and fishing-parties; and,
depend upon it, we shall very soon have these shepherd lords and
gentlemen begging for our favor."
"Oh, you don't know them, Julius! They would not break bread with us if
they were starving."
"Very well. What do I care?"
But he did care. When the wagoners driving their long teams pretended
not to hear his greeting, for the jingling of their bells, he knew it
was pretence, and the wagoners' aversion hurt him. When the herdsmen
sauntered away from his path, and preferred not to talk to him, he felt
the bitterness of their dislike, though they were only shepherds. When
the gentlemen of the neighborhood looked straight before them, and did
not see him in their path, he burned with an indignation he would have
liked well to express. But no one took the trouble to offend him by word
or deed, and a man cannot pick a quarrel with people for simply letting
him alone.
Sophia's opinion recalled one or two of these events that were
particularly galling; and he finished his breakfast in a sulky,
leisurely fashion, to such reflections as they evoked. Then, with a
cigar in his mouth, he went to the master's room to see Moser. He had
been told that other parties were there also, but he did not surmise
that their business was identical.
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