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 drawingroom,

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 female

eye was turned, and Elizabeth was the happy woman by whom

he finally seated himself; and the agreeable manner in which he immediately