Read it through once

The advertisement in the Reading papers, announcing the sale of Bertram House, was, of course, something in the nature of a surprise to the County folk, although, doubtless, some of them were sufficiently well-informed to know that the Mitfords were in trouble. “There is no news in this neighbourhood,” wrote Miss Mitford to Sir William Elford, “excepting what we make ourselves by our intended removal; and truly I think our kind friends and acquaintances ought to be infinitely obliged to us for affording them a topic of such inexhaustible fertility. Deaths and marriages are nothing to it. There is, where they go? and why they go? and when they go? and how they go? and who will come? and when? and how? and what are they like? and how many in family? and more questions and answers, and conjectures, than could be uttered in an hour by three female tongues, or than I (though a very quick scribbler) could write in a week.”