Emma’s attempts to stop her father had been
vain; and when he had reached such a point as this,
she could not wonder at her brother-in-law’s
breaking out.
“Mr. Perry,” said he, in a voice of very
strong displeasure, “would do as well to keep
his opinion till it is asked for. Why does he
make it any business of his, to wonder at what I do?—
at my taking my family to one part of the coast or
another?—I may be allowed, I hope, the
use of my judgment as well as Mr. Perry.—
I want his directions no more than his drugs.”
He paused— and growing cooler in a moment,
added, with only sarcastic dryness, “If Mr.
Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and five children
a distance of an hundred and thirty miles with no greater
expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty,
I should be as willing to prefer Cromer to South End
as he could himself.”
“True, true,” cried Mr. Knightley, with
most ready interposition— “very true.
That’s a consideration indeed.—But
John, as to what I was telling you of my idea of moving
the path to Langham, of turning it more to the right
that it may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot
conceive any difficulty. I should not attempt
it, if it were to be the means of inconvenience to
the Highbury people, but if you call to mind exactly
the present line of the path. . . . The only
way of proving it, however, will be to turn to our
maps. I shall see you at the Abbey to-morrow
morning I hope, and then we will look them over, and
you shall give me your opinion.”
Mr. Woodhouse was rather agitated by such harsh reflections
on his friend Perry, to whom he had, in fact, though
unconsciously, been attributing many of his own feelings
and expressions;— but the soothing attentions
of his daughters gradually removed the present evil,
and the immediate alertness of one brother, and better
recollections of the other, prevented any renewal of
it.
There could hardly be a happier creature in the world
than Mrs. John Knightley, in this short visit to Hartfield,
going about every morning among her old acquaintance
with her five children, and talking over what she
had done every evening with her father and sister.
She had nothing to wish otherwise, but that the days
did not pass so swiftly. It was a delightful
visit;—perfect, in being much too short.
In general their evenings were less engaged with friends
than their mornings; but one complete dinner engagement,
and out of the house too, there was no avoiding, though
at Christmas. Mr. Weston would take no denial;
they must all dine at Randalls one day;—even
Mr. Woodhouse was persuaded to think it a possible
thing in preference to a division of the party.
How they were all to be conveyed, he would have made
a difficulty if he could, but as his son and daughter’s
carriage and horses were actually at Hartfield, he
was not able to make more than a simple question on
that head; it hardly amounted to a doubt; nor did
it occupy Emma long to convince him that they might
in one of the carriages find room for Harriet also.
