‘Unsafe!Oh,lord!what is there in that?they will only get a roll if it does break down;and there is plenty of dirt,it will be excellent falling.Oh,curse it!the carriage is safe enough,if a man knows how to drive it;a thing of that sort in good hands will last above twenty years after it is fairly worn out.Lord bless you!I would undertake for five pounds to drive it to York and back again,without losing a nail.’
Catherine listened with astonishment;she knew not how to reconcile two such very different accounts of the same thing;for she had not been brought up to understand the propensities of a rattle,nor to know to how many idle assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity will lead.Her own family were plain matter of fact people,who seldom aimed at wit of any kind;her father,at the utmost,being contented with a pun,and her mother with a proverb;they were not in the habit therefore of telling lies to increase their importance,or of asserting at one moment what they would contradict the next.She reflected on the affair for some time in much perplexity,and was more than once on the point of requesting from Mr Thorpe a clearer insight into his real opinion on the subject;but she checked herself,because it appeared to her that he did not excel in giving those clearer insights,in making those things plain which he had before made ambiguous;and,joining to this,the consideration that he would not really suffer his sister and his friend to be exposed to a danger from which he might easily preserve them,she concluded at last,that he must know the carriage to be in fact perfectly safe,and therefore would alarm herself no longer.By him the whole matter seemed entirely forgotten;and all the rest of his conversation,or rather talk,began and ended with himself and his own concerns.He told her of horses which he had bought for a trifle and sold for incredible sums;of racing matches in which his judgment had infallibly foretold the winner;of shooting parties,in which he had killed more birds (though without having one good shot)than all his companions together;and described to her some famous day's sport,with the foxhounds,in which his foresight and skill in directing the dogs had repaired the mistakes of the most experienced huntsman,and in which the boldness of his riding,though it had never endangered his own life for a moment,had been constantly leading others into difficulties,which he calmly concluded had broken the necks of many.
Little as Catherine was in the habit of judging for herself,and unfixed as were her general notions of what men ought to be,she could not entirely repress a doubt,while she bore with the effusions of his endless conceit,of his being altogether completely agreeable.It was a bold surmise,for he was Isabella's brother;and she had been assured by James,that his manners would recommend him to all her sex;but in spite of this,the extreme weariness of his company,which crept over her before they had been out an hour,and which continued unceasingly to increase till they stopped in Pulteney Street again,induced her,in some small degree,to resist such high authority,and to distrust his powers of giving universal pleasure.
When they arrived at Mrs Allen's door,the astonishment of Isabella was hardly to be expressed,on finding that it was too late in the day for them to attend her friend into the house: ‘Past three o'clock!’it was inconceivable,incredible,impossible!and she would neither believe her own watch,nor her brother's,nor the servant's;she would believe no assurance of it founded on reason or reality,till Morland produced his watch,and ascertained the fact;to have doubted a moment longer then,would have been equally inconceivable,incredible,and impossible;and she could only protest,over and over again,that no two hours and a half had ever gone off so swiftly before,as Catherine was called on to confirm;Catherine could not tell a falsehood even to please Isabella;but the latter was spared the misery of her friend's dissenting voice,by not waiting for her answer.Her own feelings entirely engrossed her;her wretchedness was most acute on finding herself obliged to go directly home. It was ages since she had had a moment's conversation with her dearest Catherine;and,though she had such thousands of things to say to her,it appeared as if they were never to be together again;so,with smiles of most exquisite misery,and the laughing eye of utter despondency,she bade her friend adieu and went on.
Catherine found Mrs Allen just returned from all the busy idleness of the morning,and was immediately greeted with,‘Well,my dear,here you are;’a truth which she had no greater inclination than power to dispute;‘and I hope you have had a pleasant airing?’
‘Yes,ma'am,I thank you;we could not have had a nicer day.’
‘So Mrs Thorpe said;she was vastly pleased at your all going.’
‘You have seen Mrs Thorpe then?’
‘Yes,I went to the Pump room as soon as you were gone,and there I met her,and we had a great deal of talk together.She says there was hardly any veal to be got at market this morning,it is so uncommonly scarce.’
‘Did you see anybody else of our acquaintance?’
‘Yes;we agreed to take a turn in the Crescent,and there we met Mrs Hughes,and Mr and Miss Tilney walking with her.’
‘Did you indeed?and did they speak to you?’
‘Yes,we walked along the Crescent together for half an hour.They seem very agreeable people.Miss Tilney was in a very pretty spotted muslin,and I fancy,by what I can learn,that she always dresses very handsomely.Mrs Hughes talked to me a great deal about the family.’
‘And what did she tell you of them?’
‘Oh!a vast deal indeed;she hardly talked of anything else.’
‘Did she tell you what part of Gloucestershire they come from?’