Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 16

As no objection was made to the young people's engagement

with their aunt, and all Mr. Collins's scruples of leaving Mr.

and Mrs. Bennet for a single evening during his visit were most

steadily resisted, the coach conveyed him and his five cousins

at a suitable hour to Meryton; and the girls had the pleasure of

hearing, as they entered the drawing-room, that Mr. Wickham

had accepted their uncle's invitation, and was then in the house.

When this information was given, and they had all taken their

seats, Mr. Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire,

and he was so much struck with the size and furniture of the

apartment, that he declared he might almost have supposed

himself in the small summer breakfast parlour at Rosings; a

comparison that did not at first convey much gratification; but

when Mrs. Phillips understood from him what Rosings was, and

who was its proprietor--when she had listened to the description

of only one of Lady Catherine's drawing-rooms, and found that

the chimney-piece alone had cost eight hundred pounds, she felt

all the force of the compliment, and would hardly have resented

a comparison with the housekeeper's room.

In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her

mansion, with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble

abode, and the improvements it was receiving, he was happily

employed until the gentlemen joined them; and he found in

Mrs. Phillips a very attentive listener, whose opinion of

his consequence increased with what she heard, and who was

resolving to retail it all among her neighbours as soon as she

could. To the girls, who could not listen to their cousin,

and who had nothing to do but to wish for an instrument, and

examine their own indifferent imitations of china on the

mantelpiece, the interval of waiting appeared very long. It was

over at last, however. The gentlemen did approach, and when

Mr. Wickham walked into the room, Elizabeth felt that she had

neither been seeing him before, nor thinking of him since, with

the smallest degree of unreasonable admiration. The officers of

the ----shire were in general a very creditable, gentlemanlike

set, and the best of them were of the present party; but Mr.

Wickham was as far beyond them all in person, countenance, air,

and walk, as _they_ were superior to the broad-faced, stuffy

uncle Phillips, breathing port wine, who followed them into

the room.

Mr. Wickham was the happy man towards whom almost every