Austen Said:

at Portsmouth their correspondence would dwindle into nothing.

Would they but love her, she should be satisfied.

everything was always for the best;

they should prefer it to anything.

you will certainly have a cruise to the westward, with the Elephant.

he thought you would be sent first to the Texel.

she had slipped her moorings and was coming out,

she was grown into a woman, and he supposed would be wanting a husband soon,

to go and change his dress, and make the necessary preparations for his removal on board directly, that he might have his tea in comfort afterwards.

the Thrush was gone out of harbour;

She was at home. But, alas! it was not such a home, she had not such a welcome, as—

she was unreasonable. What right had she to be of importance to her family? She could have none, so long lost sight of! William's concerns must be dearest, they always had been, and he had every right. Yet to have so little said or asked about herself, to have scarcely an inquiry made after Mansfield! It did pain her to have Mansfield forgotten; the friends who had done so much —the dear, dear friends! But here, one subject swallowed up all the rest. Perhaps it must be so. The destination of the Thrush must be now preeminently interesting. A day or two might shew the difference. She only was to blame. Yet

it would not have been so at Mansfield. No, in her uncle's house there would have been a consideration of times and seasons, a regulation of subject, a propriety, an attention towards everybody which there was not here.

it as a proof of anything more than their being for the time thoroughly fagged,

she should be very glad of a little tea,

Susan had an open, sensible countenance; she was like William,

being on shore some part of every day before they sailed, and even of getting her to Spithead to see the sloop.

the impossibility of getting Sam ready in time,

the shocking character of all the Portsmouth servants, of whom

her own two were the very worst,

her mother meant to part with her when her year was up.

'Let sister Susan have my knife, mama, when I am dead and buried.'

she hoped that her god-daughter was a good girl, and learnt her book.

One was found to have too small a print for a child's eyes, and the other to be too cumbersome for her to carry about.

William was gone: and the home he had left her in was,

in almost every respect the very reverse of what she could have wished. It was the abode of noise, disorder, and impropriety. Nobody was in their right place, nothing was done as it ought to be.

It was the greatest misery of all. At Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted. If tenderness could be ever supposed wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied its place; and as to the little irritations sometimes introduced by aunt Norris, they were short, they were trifling, they were as a drop of water to the ocean, compared with the ceaseless tumult of her present abode. Here everybody was noisy, every voice was loud (excepting, perhaps, her mother's, which resembled the soft monotony of Lady Bertram's, only worn into fretfulness). Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke.

though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.

'Well, Mary, when do you write to Fanny? Is not it time for you to write to Fanny?'

Susan tried to be useful, where she could only have gone away and cried; and that Susan was useful

that things, bad as they were, would have been worse but for such interposition, and that both her mother and Betsey were restrained from some excesses of very offensive indulgence and vulgarity.

In every argument with her mother, Susan had in point of reason the advantage, and never was there any maternal tenderness to buy her off. The blind fondness which was for ever producing evil around her she had never known. There was no gratitude for affection past or present to make her better bear with its excesses to the others.

That her manner was wrong, however, at times very wrong, her measures often ill-chosen and ill-timed, and her looks and language very often indefensible,

now she had got one so much prettier herself, she should never want that again;

her sister's judgment had been against her, and

a reproof was designed her for having so struggled as to make the purchase necessary for the tranquillity of the house.

so much better knowledge, so many good notions should have been hers at all; and that, brought up in the midst of negligence and error, she should have formed such proper opinions of what ought to be; she, who had had no cousin Edmund to direct her thoughts or fix her principles.

to be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any one's improvement in view in her choice!

if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.

Either his going had been again delayed, or he had yet procured no opportunity of seeing Miss Crawford alone, or he was too happy for letter-writing!

Mr. Price was out, which she regretted very much.

she could not regret it;

She was ashamed, and she would have been yet more ashamed of her father than of all the rest.

she had never seen so agreeable a man in her life;

so great and so agreeable as he was, he should be come down to Portsmouth neither on a visit to the port-admiral, nor the commissioner, nor yet with the intention of going over to the island, nor of seeing the dockyard.

He had reached it late the night before, was come for a day or two, was staying at the Crown, had accidentally met with a navy officer or two of his acquaintance since his arrival,

he had spent half an hour with his sister the evening before his leaving London;

she had sent her best and kindest love, but had had no time for writing;

he thought himself lucky in seeing Mary for even half an hour, having spent scarcely twenty-four hours in London, after his return from Norfolk, before he set off again;

her cousin Edmund was in town, had been in town, he understood, a few days;