The number of acres contained in this garden was such as Catherine could not listen to without dismay, being more than double the extent of all Mr. Allen’s, as well as her father’s, including churchyard and orchard. The walls seemed countless in number, endless in length; a village of hothouses seemed to arise among them, and a whole parish to be at work within the enclosure. The General was flattered by her looks of surprise, which told him almost as plainly, as he soon forced her to tell him in words, that she had never seen any gardens at all equal to them before; and he then modestly owned that, “without any ambition of that sort himself⁠—without any solicitude about it⁠—he did believe them to be unrivalled in the kingdom. If he had a hobbyhorse, it was that . He loved a garden. Though careless enough in most matters of eating, he loved good fruit⁠—or if he did not, his friends and children did. There were great vexations, however, attending such a garden as his. The utmost care could not always secure the most valuable fruits. The pinery had yielded only one hundred in the last year.