Oddparts Press

"I am glad you are come back, Lizzy."

Their party in the dining-room was large, for almost all the
Lucases came to meet Maria and hear the news; and various
were the subjects that occupied them: Lady Lucas was inquiring
of Maria, after the welfare and poultry of her eldest daughter;
Mrs. Bennet was doubly engaged, on one hand collecting an
account of the present fashions from Jane, who sat some way
below her, and, on the other, retailing them all to the younger
Lucases; and Lydia, in a voice rather louder than any other
person's, was enumerating the various pleasures of the morning
to anybody who would hear her.

"Oh! Mary," said she, "I wish you had gone with us, for we had
such fun! As we went along, Kitty and I drew up the blinds,
and pretended there was nobody in the coach; and I should have
gone so all the way, if Kitty had not been sick; and when we got
to the George, I do think we behaved very handsomely, for we
treated the other three with the nicest cold luncheon in the
world, and if you would have gone, we would have treated you
too. And then when we came away it was such fun! I thought
we never should have got into the coach. I was ready to die
of laughter. And then we were so merry all the way home! we
talked and laughed so loud, that anybody might have heard us
ten miles off!"

To this Mary very gravely replied, "Far be it from me, my dear
sister, to depreciate such pleasures! They would doubtless be
congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess
they would have no charms for _me_--I should infinitely prefer a
book."

But of this answer Lydia heard not a word. She seldom listened
to anybody for more than half a minute, and never attended to
Mary at all.