Page 81 of Hard Home

The candle had burned down a long way.

"Say that again," said Elizabeth.

"It is worse in that county," said Jane.

Chapter Thirty-Six

It was the second week in May, in which the three young ladies set out together from Gracechurch-street for the town of ——, in Hertfordshire; and as they drew near the appointed inn where Mr. Bennet's carriage was to meet them, they quickly perceived, in token of the coachman's punctuality, both Kitty and Lydia looking out of a dining-room up stairs.

These two girls had been above an hour in the place, happily employed in visiting an opposite milliner, watching the sentinel on guard, and dressing a sallad and cucumber.

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 we mean to treat you all," added Lydia; "but you must lend us the money, for we have just spent ours at the shop out there." Then showing her purchases: "Look here, I have bought this bonnet. I do not think it is very pretty; but I thought I might as well buy it as not. I shall pull it to pieces as soon as I get home, and see if I can make it up any better."

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 colored 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."

"Are they indeed!" cried Elizabeth, with the greatest satisfaction.

"They are going to be encamped near Brighton; and I do so want papa to take us all there for the summer! It would be such a delicious scheme, and I dare say would hardly cost any thingat all. Mama would like to go too of all things! Only think what a miserable summer else we shall have!"

"Yes," thought Elizabeth, "thatwould be a delightful scheme, indeed, and completely do for us at once."

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She had got out of the carriage and up the inn stairs and through the whole of the bonnet before she looked properly at Kitty.

Kitty was standing at the end of the table cutting the cucumber. She was doing it neatly and slowly, and she had a color, and she said "Hallo, Lizzy" pleasantly enough, and she had lost about half a stone in nine weeks.

Elizabeth went and stood beside her and took the knife out of her hand and finished the cucumber herself, and Kitty let her, without any remark at all, which was the worst part.

"Have you had Mr. Jones?"

"Twice. He says I am to take the air and not to fret. Mama says I am to hold my head up."

"And what do you say?"

Kitty looked at her. She had a queer, patient look about the eyes that Elizabeth had seen once before in her life, on a farm laborer at Longbourn who had been thrown by a horse in September and had gone on working through the winter and had died in March.

"I say that it does not matter what I say," said Kitty, "because I have said it eleven times and it makes people cross." She sat down. "Lizzy, are you going to be strange with me? Because I would rather you were ordinary."

"I shall be perfectly ordinary," said Elizabeth. "Eat something."

"I am not hungry."

"I know you are not. Eat something notwithstanding, and I shall tell you what Lady Catherine de Bourgh said to me aboutyoung women who go into company, and it is very rude, and you may repeat it to Maria Lucas as your own."

Kitty laughed, and ate about four mouthfuls, which was more than she had eaten at one sitting in a fortnight; and Elizabeth, sitting beside her with her hands under the table, discovered that her own were shaking.

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"And so Miss King is gone to Liverpool," said Lydia, at the other end of the table, through a piece of cold beef. "Gone to her uncle. Gone for good, they say. So we are all safe of Wickham; and he never cared three straws about her, that I am certain of."

Jane said something mild about being sorry for Miss King.

"Sorry! What is there to be sorry about? She has ten thousand pounds and freckles and now she has an uncle in Liverpool too, which is more than most people. And Wickham is safe, which is the great thing." Lydia settled her elbows. "He was here on Tuesday, and Denny, and Captain Carter, and we had the greatest fun in the world at my aunt Philips's — we dressed up Chamberlayne in women's clothes on purpose to pass for a lady, only think what fun! Not a soul knew of it, but Col. and Mrs. Forster, and Kitty and me, except my aunt, for we were forced to borrow one of her gowns; and you cannot imagine how well he looked!"

She went on with it for some time. Elizabeth let her.