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Page 17
"Dear me! what can you possibly have to do?"
"A great many things, I assure you. More than I can recollect
in a moment; but I can tell you some. I have been making
a duplicate of the catalogue of my father's books and pictures.
I have been several times in the garden with Mackenzie,
trying to understand, and make him understand, which of Elizabeth's plants
are for Lady Russell. I have had all my own little concerns
to arrange, books and music to divide, and all my trunks to repack,
from not having understood in time what was intended as to the waggons:
and one thing I have had to do, Mary, of a more trying nature:
going to almost every house in the parish, as a sort of take-leave.
I was told that they wished it. But all these things took up
a great deal of time."
"Oh! well!" and after a moment's pause, "but you have never asked me
one word about our dinner at the Pooles yesterday."
"Did you go then? I have made no enquiries, because I concluded
you must have been obliged to give up the party."
"Oh yes! I went. I was very well yesterday; nothing at all
the matter with me till this morning. It would have been strange
if I had not gone."
"I am very glad you were well enough, and I hope you had a pleasant party."
"Nothing remarkable. One always knows beforehand what the dinner will be,
and who will be there; and it is so very uncomfortable not having
a carriage of one's own. Mr and Mrs Musgrove took me, and we were
so crowded! They are both so very large, and take up so much room;
and Mr Musgrove always sits forward. So, there was I, crowded into
the back seat with Henrietta and Louise; and I think it very likely
that my illness to-day may be owing to it."
A little further perseverance in patience and forced cheerfulness
on Anne's side produced nearly a cure on Mary's. She could soon
sit upright on the sofa, and began to hope she might be able
to leave it by dinner-time. Then, forgetting to think of it,
she was at the other end of the room, beautifying a nosegay;
then, she ate her cold meat; and then she was well enough
to propose a little walk.
"Where shall we go?" said she, when they were ready. "I suppose
you will not like to call at the Great House before they have
been to see you?"
"I have not the smallest objection on that account," replied Anne.
"I should never think of standing on such ceremony with people I know
so well as Mrs and the Miss Musgroves."
"Oh! but they ought to call upon you as soon as possible.
They ought to feel what is due to you as my sister. However,
we may as well go and sit with them a little while, and when we
have that over, we can enjoy our walk."
Anne had always thought such a style of intercourse highly imprudent;
but she had ceased to endeavour to check it, from believing that,
though there were on each side continual subjects of offence,
neither family could now do without it. To the Great House accordingly
they went, to sit the full half hour in the old-fashioned square parlour,
with a small carpet and shining floor, to which the present
daughters of the house were gradually giving the proper air of confusion
by a grand piano-forte and a harp, flower-stands and little tables
placed in every direction. Oh! could the originals of the portraits
against the wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and
the ladies in blue satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious
of such an overthrow of all order and neatness! The portraits themselves
seemed to be staring in astonishment.
The Musgroves, like their houses, were in a state of alteration,
perhaps of improvement. The father and mother were in the old
English style, and the young people in the new. Mr and Mrs Musgrove
were a very good sort of people; friendly and hospitable,
not much educated, and not at all elegant. Their children had
more modern minds and manners. There was a numerous family;
but the only two grown up, excepting Charles, were Henrietta and Louisa,
young ladies of nineteen and twenty, who had brought from school at Exeter
all the usual stock of accomplishments, and were now like thousands
of other young ladies, living to be fashionable, happy, and merry.
Their dress had every advantage, their faces were rather pretty,
their spirits extremely good, their manner unembarrassed and pleasant;
they were of consequence at home, and favourites abroad.
Anne always contemplated them as some of the happiest creatures
of her acquaintance; but still, saved as we all are, by some
comfortable feeling of superiority from wishing for the possibility
of exchange, she would not have given up her own more elegant
and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments; and envied them nothing
but that seemingly perfect good understanding and agreement together,
that good-humoured mutual affection, of which she had known
so little herself with either of her sisters.
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