They were then to set forward for the dockyard at once,and the walk would have been conducted (according to Mr Crawford's opinion)in a singular manner,had Mr Price been allowed the entire regulation of it,as the two girls,he found,would have been left to follow,and keep up with them,or not,as they could,while they walked on together at their own hasty pace.He was able to introduce some improvement occasionally,though by no means to the extent he wished;he absolutely would not walk away from them;and，at any crossing,or any crowd,when Mr Price was only calling out,‘Come girls-come,Fan-come,Sue-take care of yourselves-keep a sharp look out,’he would give them his particular attendance.
Once fairly in the dockyard,he began to reckon upon some happy intercourse with Fanny,as they were very soon joined by a brother lounger of Mr Price's,who was come to take his daily survey of how things went on,and who must prove a far more worthy companion than himself;and after a time the two officers seemed very well satisfied in going about together and discussing matters of equal and never-failing interest,while the young people sat down upon some timbers in the yard,or found a seat on board a vessel in the stocks which they all went to look at.Fanny was most conveniently in want of rest.Crawford could not have wished her more fatigued or more ready to sit down;but he could have wished her sister away.A quick looking girl of Susan's age was the very worst third in the world-totally different from Lady Bertram-all eyes and ears;and there was no introducing the main point before her.He must content himself with being only generally agreeable,and letting Susan have her share of entertainment,with the indulgence,now and then,of a look or hint for the better informed and conscious Fanny.Norfolk was what he had mostly to talk of;there he had been some time,and everything there was rising in importance from his present schemes.Such a man could come from no place,no society,without importing something to amuse;his journeys and his acquaintance were all of use,and Susan was entertained in a way quite new to her.For Fanny,somewhat more was related than the accidental agreeableness of the parties he had been in.For her approbation,the particular reason of his going into Norfolk at all,at this unusual time of year,was given.It had been real business,relative to the renewal of a lease in which the welfare of a large and (he believed)industrious family was at stake.He had suspected his agent of some underhand dealing-of meaning to bias him against the deserving-and he had determined to go himself,and thoroughly investigate the merits of the case.He had gone,had done even more good than he had foreseen,had been useful to more than his first plan had comprehended,and was now able to congratulate himself upon it,and to feel,that in performing a duty,he had secured agreeable recollections for his own mind.He had introduced himself to some tenants,whom he had never seen before;he had begun making acquaintance with cottages whose very existence,though on his own estate,had been hitherto unknown to him.This was aimed,and well aimed,at Fanny.It was pleasing to hear him speak so properly;here,he had been acting as he ought to do.To be the friend of the poor and the oppressed!Nothing could be more grateful to her,and she was on the point of giving him an approving look when it was all frightened off,by his adding a something too pointed of his hoping soon to have an assistant,a friend,a guide in every plan of utility or charity for Everingham,a somebody that would make Everingham and all about it,a dearer object than it had ever been yet.
She turned away,and wished he would not say such things.She was willing to allow he might have more good qualities than she had been wont to suppose.She began to feel the possibility of his turning out well at last;but he was and must ever be completely unsuited to her,and ought not to think of her.
He perceived that enough had been said of Everingham,and that it would be as well to talk of something else,and turned to Mansfield.He could not have chosen better;that was a topic to bring back her attention and her looks almost instantly.It was a real indulgence to her to hear or to speak of Mansfield.Now so long divided from everybody who knew the place,she felt it quite the voice of a friend when he mentioned it,and led the way to her fond exclamations in praise of its beauties and comforts,and by his honourable tribute to its inhabitants allowed her to gratify her own heart in the warmest eulogium,in speaking of her uncle as all that was clever and good,and her aunt as having the sweetest of all sweet tempers.
He had a great attachment to Mansfield himself;he said so;he looked forward with the hope of spending much,very much of his time there-always there,or in the neighbourhood.He particularly built upon a very happy summer and autumn there this year;he felt that it would be so;he depended upon it;a summer and autumn infinitely superior to the last.As animated,as diversified,as social-but with circumstances of superiority undescribable.
‘Mansfield,Sotherton,Thornton Lacey,’he continued,‘what a society will be comprised in those houses!And at Michaelmas,perhaps,a fourth may be added,some small hunting-box in the vicinity of everything so dear-for as to any partnership in Thornton Lacey,as Edmund Bertram once good-humouredly proposed,I hope I foresee two objections,two fair,excellent,irresistible objections to that plan.’
Fanny was doubly silenced here;though when the moment was passed,could regret that she had not forced herself into the acknowledged comprehension of one half of his meaning,and encouraged him to say something more of his sister and Edmund.It was a subject which she must learn to speak of,and the weakness that shrunk from it would soon be quite unpardonable.
