Read it through once

As we have already noted, the Doctor had a certain predilection for country sports and pursuits, although at the same time he was always glad to embrace any and every opportunity afforded him for the display of his peculiar skill at cards with their concomitant excitements and hazards. In these circumstances it is difficult to understand why the residence at Reading should have been given up, bearing in mind its convenience as a centre for Town and the clubs as well as for the coursing grounds of Hampshire and Oxfordshire. Possibly the real reason was that the Doctor had been indulging in that frankness of speech which his daughter named in conjunction with a rashness of action, as one of his unfortunate characteristics; or, it may be, that this was the occasion, to which Miss Mitford refers in her _Recollections_, when he “got into some feud with that influential body the corporation.”