'Propriety' can cover not only moral behaviour but also anything else a person does, thinks or chooses. What is 'proper' can extend to the way society governs and organises itself, and to the natural world with its established order. Repton, the landscape gardener (1806), wrote critically of those who follow fashion for fashion's sake "without inquiring into its reasonableness or propriety". That failure is embodied in Mr Rushworth who, ironically, is eager to employ the fashionable Repton for 'improvements' at Sotherton. Repton also expressed the practical propriety of setting the vegetable garden close to the kitchen.