Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/74

 "Mrs. Jennings received the refusal with some surprise, and repeated her invitation immediately. 'Oh, Lord! I am sure your mother can spare you very well, and I do beg you will favour me with your company, for I've quite set my heart upon it. Don't fancy that you will be any inconvenience to me, for I shan't put myself at all out of my way for you. It will only be sending Betty by the coach, and I hope I can afford that. We three shall be able to go very well in my chaise; and when we are in town, if you do not like to go wherever I do, well and good, you may always go with one of my daughters. I am sure your mother will not object to it; for I have had such good luck in getting my own children off my hands, that she will think me a very fit person to have the charge of you; and if I don't get one of you, at least, well married before I have done with you, it shall not be my fault. I shall speak a good word for you to all the young men, you may depend upon it I am sure I shall be monstrous glad of Miss Marianne's company, whether Miss Dashwood will go or not; only the more the merrier, say I, and I thought it would be more comfortable for them to be together, because, if they got tired of me, they might talk to one another, and laugh at all my odd ways behind my back; but one or the other, if not both of them, I must have.'"

At any other time an invitation like this would have disgusted Marianne Dashwood beyond power of expression; now, in her eagerness to learn something about Willoughby, she is wild to go; and Elinor makes up her mind to endure the visit for her sake, well aware that poor Mrs. Jennings will get very little society out of her companion if Marianne go with her alone.

In London the plot thickens, and all the love affairs