第121章[第1页/共6页]

“Very much.”

“I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble,my dear sister?”said he,as he joined her.

“I should be sorry indeed, if it were. We were always good friends;and now we are better.”

“I almost envy you the pleasure,and yet I believe it would be too much for me,or else I could take it in my way to Newcastle. And you saw the old housekeeper,I suppose?Poor Reynolds,she was always very fond of me.But of course she did not mention my name to you.”

“I did hear, too, that there was a time, when sermon-making was not so palatable to you as it seems to be at present;that you actually declared your resolution of never taking orders,and that the business had been compromised accordingly.”

“Exceedingly well. I should have considered it as part of my duty, and the exertion would soon have been nothing. One ought not to repine;―but,to be sure,it would have been such a thing for me!The quiet,the retirement of such a life would have answered all my ideas of happiness!But it was not to be.Did you ever hear Darcy mention the circumstance, when you were in Kent?”

She replied in the affirmative.

They were now almost at the door of the house, for she had walked fast to get rid of him;and unwilling,for her sister's sake, to provoke him, she only said in reply, with a good-humoured smile: