第82章[第1页/共4页]

After welcoming their sisters, they triumphantly displayed a table set out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords, exclaiming,“Is not this nice?Is not this an agreeable surprise?”

And when her sisters abused it as ugly,she added,with perfect unconcern,“Oh!but there were two or three much uglier in the shop; and when I have bought some prettier-coloured satin to trim it with fresh,I think it will be very tolerable.Besides,it will not much signify what one wears this summer, after the―shire have left Meryton,and they are going in a fortnight.”

“Yes,”thought Elizabeth,“that would be a delightful scheme indeed,and completely do for us at once.Good Heaven!Brighton, and a whole campful of soldiers, to us, who have been overset already by one poor regiment of militia,and the monthly balls of Meryton!”

“She is a great fool for going away,if she liked him.”

As soon as all had ate,and the elder ones paid,the carriage was ordered; and after some contrivance, the whole party, with all their boxes,work-bags,and parcels,and the unwelcome addition of Kitty's and Lydia's purchases,were seated in it.

Elizabeth was shocked to think that,however incapable of such coarseness of expression herself, the coarseness of the sentiment was little other than her own breast had harboured and fancied liberal!