But the annoyance to Sir Benjamin and his friends did not end here. Scattered about on that side of the country lay the estates of a number of squires—the Tenterhooks, Sheepshanks, Otterbrooks, Swagsides, &c.—who were of a thoroughly countryfied school. They were men not destitute of a certain amount of education, but who had no tastes beyond those of living on their property, and being the lords paramount as far as it extended. To be the great men of their little ancestral spots of earth; to rule over the farmers; to rear and destroy game; to officiate as magistrates, and convict poachers and petty culprits—that was the extent of their ambition. They seldom frequented the metropolis, or mixed in the society of the more elevated and refined aristocracy. They formed a circle of society of their own, looking proudly down on the moneyed men of the market town, on the farmers and villagers around them—at once ignorant of all superior knowledge, proud, and arbitrary. That a man of the manufacturing town should have dared to step in, and catch away a valuable farm from before Sir Benjamin Bullockshed’s very nose, and, as they said, in actually gasping astonishment, whilst he was in negotiation for it, was a piece of audacity which really took away their breath. It was ominous of fresh attempts of the kind. The sanctity of the country and of game was no longer secure from the unhallowed inroads of plebeian audacity. Sir Roger Rockville, whose property also at one point came up to Mr. Degge’s farm, was in a state of most imbecile exasperation at this event. The dreaded manufacturing town was thus already marching into the very heart of the country; and of the manufacturing town, the very worst in his eyes of its odious population. For who was this Degge? he asked. A pauper, and the last of a long line of paupers. It mattered not that Mr. Degge had most fully discharged the pauper debt so far as this generation was concerned. To Sir Roger it was only another proof of the upstart pride and abundance of money of this dangerous class.