"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?"

"No ma'am, I don't admire the lake. I'd drain the lake if I could--I
hate the lake. There's nothing so gloomy as a lake pent up among barren
mountains. I can't conceive what possessed my people to build our house
down here, at the edge of a lake; unless it was the fish, and precious
fish it is--pike! I don't know how people digest it--_I_ can't. I'd as
soon think of eating a watchman's pike."

"I thought that having travelled so much abroad, you would have acquired
a great liking for that kind of scenery, Sir Bale; there is a great deal
of it on the Continent, ain't there?" said Mrs. Bedel. "And the
boating."