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“It was a perfectly clear reading. That is exactly what is wrong with it.”

Elinor, at the head of the table, had gone still in a particular way that her husband, at her side, recognised at once; and it was Edward, buttering his own toast with great concentration and not looking up, who observed, mildly, to nobody in particular, that he had known a lady once who held very similar views upon the subject of reading aloud, and that he had never, in five-and-twenty years, succeeded in curing himself of the fault she complained of, and did not now expect to.

“You are still reproached for it, Papa?” said Mary, with interest.

“At least once a month,” said Edward.

“And do you not mind it?”

“I minded it a great deal, at three-and-twenty,” said Edward, buttering on, “and considerably less now. I find that a person may go on being told the same true thing for twenty years, by someone who loves him, without it ever becoming less true, or the telling of it ever once becoming less affectionate. You will discover, I think, that your aunt has never yet succeeded in making a poet of me, and has never yet stopped trying, and that both of these facts make her extremely happy.” He glanced, briefly, sideways, with the particular dry warmth that was as near as he ever came to open teasing. “I recommend you take the same view of your sister. It is a great deal more comfortable than taking offence, and I speak with the whole authority of long practice.”

Ned, his mind having drifted off somewhere else entirely, later asked his mother to read it to him again, so that he might know what all the fuss was about.

Mary considered her father’s words with her usual gravity, and appeared, upon reflection, to find it good advice; for the next time it fell to her to read a letter, she made, by way of experiment, one single attempt at drama upon a description of a boat race, and produced an effect so alarming that Ned choked upon his egg, and returned, with evident relief, to her own flat and reliable delivery for the remainder of her life, while Sarah declared herself vindicated and entirely ignored.

But it was not always at breakfast that the reports came in. They came, also, second hand, in the course of the long vacations, from a variety of sources, and always to the same effect. Mrs. Dashwood, who had been to town in the spring, brought back a story that Lady Ardleigh had told her, at Margaret’s, of an evening party at which a young gentleman of the name of Henry had been observed, for the whole of an hour, in the corner, in conversation with the most disagreeable old baronet in England, upon the subject of the poor. It was said, and generally believed, that he danced with the plainest girl in every room. It was reported by Mrs. Jennings, in a letter from a friend in Portman Square, that he was pronounced by all the mothers in Mayfair to be the most charming young man of the year, and that a Duchess had asked him twice to dinner.

And there came, in the winter of his second year, a long note to the Colonel, in a large, careless, sprawling, cheerful hand, from a gentleman who signed himself Your obedient servant, Rupert Fanshawe, and added below, with a flourish, (a family man with four children and a great bore at the club, as I always said I should be.)

Your Henry dined with us at my mother’s on Thursday, it ran. He is quite delightful. I do not know where you found him. He was the only man in the room who asked my sister Harriet about her fossils and listened to the answer; and he has been more than kind to a small nephew of mine who has got into a great deal of trouble at Harrow. He is a favourite everywhere. It is a very good thing for a person to be a favourite, provided he does not know it; and I have looked, upon three occasions, very hard, and I do not believe that he does. Give my regards to Mrs. Brandon.

After reading it aloud at his own breakfast table, he folded it neatly and handed it to Marianne. She and Anne promptly called on the Ferrars on the third of March, and found the whole family assembled, with the thin winter sun coming in slantwise upon the cloth; and there Marianne read it aloud to the table. Mary, at the far end, said that it was very gratifying, and that she was sure he would be a great credit; Ned said, with a groan, that he hoped Henry would not be married before he came home; and Sarah, at the corner, laughed.

It was a very good laugh. It was clear, and quick, and perfectly natural. It was the laugh of a girl who has nothing whatever the matter with her. And it was Elinor, who had been looking, not at the letter, but at her fourteen-year-old daughter’s face, who saw the small hand upon the table-cloth, beside the cup, close very slowly upon the edge of the napkin, and hold it tightly.

Chapter XXXIV.

On one of the occasions when the Brandons went to London to visit Henry, Marianne and Anne took the opportunity to also do some shopping while there.

The day after arriving home, a message was sent to the parsonage for Elinor and her daughters to come for tea at Delaford. They were met with, in addition to a very fine tea with delicate pastries from London, the contents of a trunk piled on one of the sofas in the drawing-room.

Marianne pronounced she and Anne had chosen some fabrics so that the mothers and daughters might each have a new dress or two. There was a deep blue sarsenet, a lovely green silk, a sprigged muslin the colour of new cream, a pale blue muslin which everyone knew instantly that Elinor would choose, and a white muslin with pink rosebuds. There was also an assortment of calico and chintz for morning dresses.

“Mary,” said Anne. “I chose this one especially for you.” She lifted a length of fine jaconet printed all over with small gold flowers. “Look, the flowers match the colour of the gold flecks in your eyes.”

There were matching ribbons; a card of pearl buttons; and, folded in paper at the very bottom, a sheaf of the newest patterns from a modiste in Bond Street.

“Brandon’s doing,” Marianne said.

Elinor raised an eyebrow at the sheer quantity of it but smiled regardless. “Of course it was. He has the most generous nature there ever was.”

Marianne nodded. “We were about to leave to do some small shopping when Anne mentioned she thought she would like to bring Mary some piece goods, since she is the oldest and soon to be of marriageable age. Brandon then insisted that we must not return home to you all empty handed. I own I did not argue extremely hard, for none of us has had anything new to wear in some time.”

Mary blushed but her eyes sparkled as the jaconet was handed to her. “Oh, it is beautiful,” she murmured in wonder, holding it up and looking in the mirror.

Sarah, sitting on the floor amid the wreck of ribbon and papers, gasped, “Mary! It is exactly the right colours for you!”

Both Sarah and Anne had turned sixteen that year. However, unlike her mild-mannered cousin, Sarah’s chief interest in life up to that point was to run to the top branches of the old beech by the stream, and the question of whether a hedgehog could be tamed if one were sufficiently patient. She could outrun Ned over any distance under a mile and took considerable satisfaction in proving it at every opportunity, and continued, through all of it, to be perfectly indifferent to the contents of her own wardrobe, which her mother chose for her and which she wore without complaint and without the smallest curiosity. And while her mother had a standing grievance against her daughter’s hair for refusing to do anything she asked of it, Sarah rarely thought twice about it.

Now she ran her fingers across the blue sarsenet on her knees.

“You like that one,” said Marianne, watching her.

“It is a very nice blue.” Sarah said it almost defensively, as though liking a piece of cloth were an admission that wanted some excusing. “I don’t know why I’m looking at it. I haven’t anywhere to wear a thing like this.”

“No,” Marianne agreed, comfortably, “perhaps not yet you haven’t. But young ladies of sixteen can certainly begin to be prepared. It does seem that neither you nor Anne have grown even a quarter of an inch since last winter, so any dress made now should last for at least two more summers. But we shall add a substantial hem to it in case you do grow.”

Sarah discovered that she liked the idea. It felt like trying on an interest the way one tries on a glove to see if it fits. All afternoon the girls looked over the patterns, frowning over puffed sleeves versus plain, asking each other’s opinions.