Page:Austen - Mansfield Park, vol. I, 1814.djvu/271

 Ladyship in the heavy tone of one half roused,—"I was not asleep."

"Oh! dear, no Ma'am—Nobody suspected you—Well Edmund," he continued, returning to the former subject, posture, and voice, as soon as Lady Bertram began to nod again—"But this I will maintain—that we shall be doing no harm."

"I cannot agree with you—I am convinced that my Father would totally disapprove it."

"And I am convinced to the contrary.—Nobody is fonder of the exercise of talent in young people or promotes it more than my father, and for any thing of the Acting, Spouting, Reciting kind, I think he has always a decided taste. I am sure he encouraged it in us as boys. How many a time have we mourned over the dead body of Julius Cæsar, and to be'd and not to be'd, in this very room, for his amusement. And I am sure, my name was Norval,