Austen Said:

it was twenty-three miles.

“You have lost an hour,”

“it was only ten o’clock when we came from Tetbury.”

“Yes,”

“but you forget that your horse was included.”

“Well, Catherine, how do you like my friend Thorpe?”

“He is as good-natured a fellow as ever lived; a little of a rattle; but that will recommend him to your sex, I believe: and how do you like the rest of the family?”

“I am very glad to hear you say so; she is just the kind of young woman I could wish to see you attached to; she has so much good sense, and is so thoroughly unaffected and amiable; I always wanted you to know her; and she seems very fond of you. She said the highest things in your praise that could possibly be; and the praise of such a girl as Miss Thorpe even you, Catherine,”

“may be proud of.”

“Because I thought I should soon see you myself. I hope you will be a great deal together while you are in Bath. She is a most amiable girl; such a superior understanding! How fond all the family are of her; she is evidently the general favourite; and how much she must be admired in such a place as this — is not she?”

“I dare say he does; and I do not know any man who is a better judge of beauty than Mr. Allen. I need not ask you whether you are happy here, my dear Catherine; with such a companion and friend as Isabella Thorpe, it would be impossible for you to be otherwise; and the Allens, I am sure, are very kind to you?”

“Indeed, Catherine, I love you dearly.”

“But what is all this whispering about? What is going on?”

“And is that likely to satisfy me, do you think?”

“Upon my honour,”

“in these public assemblies, it is as often done as not.”

“Henry!”

“Yes, he does dance very well.”

“When Henry had the pleasure of seeing you before, he was in Bath but for a couple of days. He came only to engage lodgings for us.”

“Yes, an acquaintance of Mrs. Hughes.”

“Not very.”

“Yes, sometimes; but he has rid out this morning with my father.”

“Perhaps we — Yes, I think we certainly shall.”

“I doubt our being able to do so much,”

“We had better go back, Thorpe; it is too late to go on today; your sister thinks so as well as I. We have been exactly an hour coming from Pulteney Street, very little more than seven miles; and, I suppose, we have at least eight more to go. It will never do. We set out a great deal too late. We had much better put it off till another day, and turn round.”

“Nay, Catherine. I think you cannot stand out any longer now. The sacrifice is not much; and to oblige such a friend — I shall think you quite unkind, if you still refuse.”

“No, no, no!”

“that could not be, for Thorpe did not know that he might not go to town on Tuesday.”

“Catherine, you must go,”

“I did not think you had been so obstinate, Catherine,”

“you were not used to be so hard to persuade; you once were the kindest, best-tempered of my sisters.”

“Let her go, let her go, if she will go. She is as obstinate as — ”

“Yes,”

“and I remember that you undertook to read it aloud to me, and that when I was called away for only five minutes to answer a note, instead of waiting for me, you took the volume into the Hermitage Walk, and I was obliged to stay till you had finished it.”

“Henry,”

“you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word ‘nicest,’ as you used it, did not suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.”

“While, in fact,”

“it ought only to be applied to you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise. Come, Miss Morland, let us leave him to meditate over our faults in the utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho in whatever terms we like best. It is a most interesting work. You are fond of that kind of reading?”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, I am fond of history.”

“Historians, you think,”

“are not happy in their flights of fancy. They display imagination without raising interest. I am fond of history — and am very well contented to take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in former histories and records, which may be as much depended on, I conclude, as anything that does not actually pass under one’s own observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they are embellishments, and I like them as such. If a speech be well drawn up, I read it with pleasure, by whomsoever it may be made — and probably with much greater, if the production of Mr. Hume or Mr. Robertson, than if the genuine words of Caractacus, Agricola, or Alfred the Great.”

“Indeed! And of what nature?”

“Good heaven! Where could you hear of such a thing?”

“You speak with astonishing composure! But I hope your friend’s accounts have been exaggerated; and if such a design is known beforehand, proper measures will undoubtedly be taken by government to prevent its coming to effect.”

“Miss Morland, do not mind what he says; but have the goodness to satisfy me as to this dreadful riot.”

“And now, Henry,”

“that you have made us understand each other, you may as well make Miss Morland understand yourself — unless you mean to have her think you intolerably rude to your sister, and a great brute in your opinion of women in general. Miss Morland is not used to your odd ways.”

“No doubt; but that is no explanation of the present.”

“You know what you ought to do. Clear your character handsomely before her. Tell her that you think very highly of the understanding of women.”