Page:Austen Sanditon and other miscellanea.djvu/150

 120 she did not like it better when she heard Margaret Eve minutes afterwards say to Elizabeth in a sharp quick accent, totally unlike the first: ‘Have you heard from Pen since she went to Chichester? I had a letter the other day. I don’t find she is likely to make anything of it. I fancy she’ll come back "Miss Penelope" as she went.’

Such, she feared, would be Margaret’s common voice, when the novelty of her own appearance were over; the tone of artificial Sensibility was not recommended by the idea. The Ladies were invited upstairs to prepare for dinner. ‘I hope you will find things tolerably comfortable, Jane,’ said Elizabeth, as she opened the door of the spare bedchamber. ‘My good creature,’ replied Jane, ‘use no ceremony with me, I intreat you. I am one of those who always take things as they find them. I hope I can put up with a small apartment for two or three nights, without making a piece of work. I always wish to be treated quite en famille when I come to see you; and now I do hope you have not been getting a great dinner for us. Remember we never eat suppers.’ ‘I suppose,’ said Margaret rather quickly to Emma, ‘you and I are to be together; Elizabeth always takes care to have a room to herself.’ ‘No; Elizabeth gives me half of hers.’ ‘Oh!’ (in a soften’d voice, and rather mortified to find that she was not ill used) ‘I am sorry I am not to have the pleasure of your company, especially as it makes me nervous to be much alone.’

Emma was the first of the females in the parlour again; on entering it she found her brother alone. ‘So, Emma,’ said he, ‘you are quite a Stranger at home. It must seem odd enough to you to be here. A pretty piece of work your Aunt Turner has made of it! By Heaven! A woman should never be trusted with money. I always said she ought to have settled something on you, as soon as her Husband died.’ ‘But that would have been trusting me with money,’