“I often think,”said she,“that there is nothing so bad as parting with one's friends.One seems so forlorn without them.”
“It is no such thing. Lydia does not leave me because she is married,but only because her husband's regiment happens to be so far off. If that had been nearer, she would not have gone so soon.”
“As often as I can. But you know married women have never much time for writing.My sisters may write to me.They will have nothing else to do.”
In spite of what her sister declared,and really believed to be her feelings in the expectation of his arrival, Elizabeth could easily perceive that her spirits were affected by it.They were more disturbed,more unequal,than she had often seen them.
“Oh,lord!I don't know.Not these two or three years,perhaps.”
The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their parents, about a twelvemonth ago, was now brought forward again.
“Yet it is hard,”she sometimes thought,“that this poor man cannot come to a house which he has legally hired,without raising all this speculation!I will leave him to himself.”
“You may depend on it,”replied the other,“for Mrs.Nicholls was in Meryton last night; I saw her passing by, and went out myself on purpose to know the truth of it;and she told me that it was certain true.He comes down on Thursday at the latest,very likely on Wednesday.She was going to the butcher's,she told me, on purpose to order in some meat on Wednesday,and she has got three couple of ducks just fit to be killed.”