Austen Said:

“No, she would go home. I fancy she was wanted about the mince-pies. For my part, Mr. Bingley, I always keep servants that can do their own work; my daughters are brought up very differently. But everybody is to judge for themselves, and the Lucases are very good sort of girls, I assure you. It is a pity they are not handsome! Not that I think Charlotte so very plain — but then she is our particular friend.”

“Oh! dear, yes; but you must own she is very plain. Lady Lucas herself has often said so, and envied me Jane's beauty. I do not like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Jane — one does not often see anybody better looking. It is what everybody says. I do not trust my own partiality. When she was only fifteen, there was a man at my brother Gardiner's in town so much in love with her that my sister-in-law was sure he would make her an offer before we came away. But, however, he did not. Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were.”

“And so ended his affection,”

“There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!”

“I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love,”

“Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.”

her thanks to Mr. Bingley for his kindness to Jane,

for troubling him also with Lizzy.

having promised on his first coming into the country to give a ball at Netherfield.

it would be the most shameful thing in the world if he did not keep it.

“Oh! yes — it would be much better to wait till Jane was well, and by that time most likely Captain Carter would be at Meryton again. And when you have given your ball,”

“You are mistaken. I write rather slowly.”

“It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of to yours.”

“I have already told her so once, by your desire.”

“Thank you — but I always mend my own.”

“Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again? At present I have not room to do them justice.”

“They are generally long; but whether always charming it is not for me to determine.”

“My style of writing is very different from yours.”

“Your humility, Mr. Bingley,”

“must disarm reproof.”

“Nothing is more deceitful,”

“than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

“The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.

When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning that

you meant it to be a sort of panegyric, of compliment to yourself — and yet what is there so very laudable in a precipitance which must leave very necessary business undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone else?”

“I dare say you believed it; but I am by no means convinced that you would be gone with such celerity. Your conduct would be quite as dependent on chance as that of any man I know; and if, as you were mounting your horse,

a friend were to say,

you would probably do it, you would probably not go — and, at another word, might stay a month.”

“You have only proved by this,”

“that Mr. Bingley did not do justice to his own disposition. You have shown him off now much more than he did himself.”

“Would Mr. Darcy then consider the rashness of your original intentions as atoned for by your obstinacy in adhering to it?”

“You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged. Allowing the case, however, to stand according to your representation, you must remember, Miss Bennet, that the friend who is supposed to desire his return to the house, and the delay of his plan, has merely desired it, asked it without offering one argument in favour of its propriety.”

“To yield readily — easily — to the persuasion of a friend is no merit with you.”

“To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.”

“You appear to me, Mr. Darcy, to allow nothing for the influence of friendship and affection. A regard for the requester would often make one readily yield to a request, without waiting for arguments to reason one into it. I am not particularly speaking of such a case as you have supposed about Mr. Bingley. We may as well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance occurs before we discuss the discretion of his behaviour thereupon. But in general and ordinary cases between friend and friend, where one of them is desired by the other to change a resolution of no very great moment, should you think ill of that person for complying with the desire, without waiting to be argued into it?”

“Will it not be advisable, before we proceed on this subject, to arrange with rather more precision the degree of importance which is to appertain to this request, as well as the degree of intimacy subsisting between the parties?”

“I see your design, Bingley,”

“You dislike an argument, and want to silence this.”

“What you ask,”

“is no sacrifice on my side; and Mr. Darcy had much better finish his letter.”

“Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an opportunity of dancing a reel?”

“Oh!”

“I heard you before, but I could not immediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say ‘Yes,’ that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have, therefore, made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all — and now despise me if you dare.”

“Indeed I do not dare.”

“Have you anything else to propose for my domestic felicity?”

“It would not be easy, indeed, to catch their expression, but their colour and shape, and the eyelashes, so remarkably fine, might be copied.”

“This walk is not wide enough for our party. We had better go into the avenue.”

“No, no; stay where you are. You are charmingly grouped, and appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth. Good-bye.”

he could imagine but two motives for their choosing to walk up and down the room together, with either of which motives his joining them would interfere.

“Not at all,”