To Darcy’s regret, they were then interrupted.

“Yes, indeed,” cried Mrs. Bennet, looking most offended, “I assure you there is quite as much of that going on in the country as in town.”

Darcy, after looking at her for a moment, turned silently away. Mrs. Bennet, who fancied she had triumphed over him, persisted.

“I cannot see that London has any great advantage over the country for my part, except the shops and public places. The country is a vast deal pleasanter, is not it, Mr. Bingley?”

“When I am in the country,” he replied, “I never wish to leave it; and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have each their advantages, and I can be equally happy in either.”

“Aye—that is because you have the right disposition. But that gentleman,” said Mrs. Bennet, looking straight at Darcy, “seemed to think the country was nothing at all.”

“Indeed, Mama, you are mistaken,” said Miss Elizabeth Bennet, blushing for her mother. “You quite mistook Mr. Darcy. He only meant that there were not such a variety of people to be met with in the country as in town, which you must acknowledge to be true.”

“Certainly, my dear, nobody said there were; but as to not meeting with many people in this neighbourhood, I believe there are few neighbourhoods larger. I know we dine with four and twenty families.”

Darcy observed that Miss Elizabeth Bennet, for the sake of saying something that might turn her mother’s thoughts, now asked Mrs. Bennet if her friend Charlotte Lucas had been at Longbourn since her coming away.

“Yes, she called yesterday with her father. What an agreeable man Sir William is, Mr. Bingley—is not he? so much the man of fashion! So genteel and so easy! He has always something to say to every body. That is my idea of good breeding; and those persons who fancy themselves very important and,” looking at Darcy as she spoke, “never open their mouths, quite mistake the matter.”

“Did Charlotte dine with you?” asked Miss Elizabeth. 

“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 differently. But every body is to judge for themselves, and the Lucases are a 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.”

“She seems a very pleasant young woman,” said Bingley.

“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, one does not often see anybody better looking. It is what every body says. I do not trust my own partiality. When she was only fifteen, there was a gentleman 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,” said Miss Elizabeth scornfully. “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!”

Darcy was surprised at this answer and decided to venture a reply.

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

“Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Every thing nourishes what is strong already.” Miss Elizabeth paused, but then in her lively way added, “But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.”

Darcy smiled at this; but said nothing. A general pause ensued, until Mrs. Bennet repeated her thanks to Bingley for his kindness to her eldest daughter, with an apology for troubling him also with her sister, and soon afterwards ordered her carriage.

At this, her youngest daughter, Lydia, a stout, well-grown girl of fifteen, taxed Bingley with having promised on his first coming into the country to give a ball at Netherfield, adding that it would be the most shameful thing in the world if he did not keep it.

His answer to this sudden attack was more civil than Darcy thought that it deserved, contrasting her very forward style of address with that of his sister. However, Bingley as ever refused to be affronted.

“I am perfectly ready, I assure you, to keep my engagement; and when your sister is recovered, you shall if you please name the very day of the ball. But you would not wish to be dancing while she is ill.”

“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,” she added, “I shall insist on their giving one also. I shall tell Colonel Forster it will be quite a shame if he does not.”

Mrs. Bennet and her daughters then departed, and Miss Elizabeth Bennet returned instantly to her sister, leaving her own and her relations’ behaviour to the remarks of the two ladies.

Darcy, however, could not be prevailed on to join in their censure of her, in spite of all Miss Bingley’s witticisms on fine eyes.

8

The next day, the invalid kept to her bed but continued, though slowly, to mend; and in the evening Miss Elizabeth Bennet joined the party in the drawing-room.

Darcy was writing, and thus continued, although he was very aware of her entering the room, and taking up some needlework.

Mr. Hurst and Bingley were at piquet, and Mrs. Hurst was observing their game. Miss Bingley, seated nearer to Darcy, had been watching the progress of his letter, and repeatedly disturbed him by calling his attention to her messages to his sister.

The perpetual commendations of the lady either on his handwriting, or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter, formed a conversation that increasingly began to irritate Darcy.

“How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter!”

He made no answer.

“You write uncommonly fast.”

He wrote two more lines before replying, “You are mistaken. I write rather slowly.”

“How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of the year! Letters of business too! How odious I should think them!”

Again he continued writing for some time before saying, “It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of to yours.”

He hoped that she would then desist, but it was not to be.

“Pray tell your sister that I long to see her.”

He looked back at what he had already penned, and then said sharply, “I have already told her so once, by your desire.”

A few welcome minutes of silence then ensued. He even had some hopes that he might be able to finish the letter uninterrupted, and he paused, considering the last few sentences he had written. But Caroline Bingley’s voice was then again heard addressing him.

“I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you.”

When he did not reply, she tried again.

“I mend pens remarkably well.”

“Thank you—but I always mend my own.”

“How can you contrive to write so even?”

He was silent.

“Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp, and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss Grantley’s.”

By this time, Darcy’s temper was rising, and it was with difficulty that he remained civil, especially as he would much rather be conversing with Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

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

“Oh! it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?”

He began to wonder if there were any means by which Miss Bingley could be silenced.

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

“It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter, with ease, cannot write ill,” she said.

“That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline,” cried her brother, “because he does not write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?”

Darcy was relieved at another person joining in the conversation, and said, more cheerfully, “My style of writing is very different from yours.”

“Oh!” cried Miss Bingley, “Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest.”

“My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents,” said her brother.

At this point, an interruption very welcome to Darcy was made, as Miss Elizabeth Bennet said, “Your humility, Mr. Bingley, must disarm reproof.”

“Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, with the intention of provoking her, rather than his friend, to say more, “than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

He was unsuccessful, for it was Bingley who said, “And which of the two do you call my little recent piece of modesty?”

With Miss Bennet’s attention still engaged, Darcy was ready for a debate.

“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 much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance. When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning that if you ever resolved on quitting Netherfield you should be gone in five minutes, 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 any one else?”