Page:Austen - Mansfield Park, vol. II, 1814.djvu/21

 having any thing to bustle about, and labouring to be important where nothing was wanted but tranquillity and silence. Would Sir Thomas have consented to eat, she might have gone to the house-keeper with troublesome directions, and insulted the footmen with injunctions of dispatch; but Sir Thomas resolutely declined all dinner; he would take nothing, nothing till tea came—he would rather wait for tea. Still Mrs. Norris was at intervals urging something different, and in the most interesting moment of his passage to England, when the alarm of a French privateer was at the height, she burst through his recital with the proposal of soup. "Sure, my dear Sir Thomas, a bason of soup would be a much better thing for you than tea. Do have a bason of soup."

Sir Thomas could not be provoked. "Still the same anxiety for every body's comfort, my dear Mrs. Norris," was