Edmund found himself obliged to speak and fill up the blanks in his mother’s story. He told the whole, and she had only to add, “So strange! for Mrs. Grant never used to ask her.”
“But is not it very natural,” observed Edmund, “that Mrs. Grant should wish to procure so agreeable a visitor for her sister?”
“Nothing can be more natural,” said Sir Thomas, after a short deliberation; “nor, were there no sister in the case, could anything in my opinion be more natural. Mrs. Grant’s showing civility to Miss Price, to Lady Bertram’s niece, could never want explanation. The only surprise I can feel is that this should be the first time of its being paid. Fanny was perfectly right in giving only a conditional answer. She appears to feel as she ought. But as I conclude that she must wish to go, since all young people like to be together, I can see no reason why she should be denied the indulgence.”
“But can I do without her, Sir Thomas?”
“Indeed I think you may.”
“She always makes tea, you know, when my sister is not here.”
“Your sister perhaps may be prevailed on to spend the day with us, and I shall certainly be at home.”
“Very well, then, Fanny may go, Edmund.”
The good news soon followed her. Edmund knocked at her door on his way to his own.
“Well, Fanny, it is all happily settled, and without the smallest hesitation on your uncle’s side. He had but one opinion. You are to go.”
“Thank you, I am so glad,” was Fanny’s instinctive reply; though when she had turned from him and shut the door, she could not help feeling, “And yet, why should I be glad? for am I not certain of seeing or hearing something there to pain me?”
In spite of this conviction, however, she was glad. Simple as such an engagement might appear in other eyes, it had novelty and importance in hers, for excepting the day at Sotherton, she had scarcely ever dined out before; and though now going only half a mile and only to three people, still it was dining out, and all the little interests of preparation were enjoyments in themselves. She had neither sympathy nor assistance from those who ought to have entered into her feelings and directed her taste; for Lady Bertram never thought of being useful to anybody, and Mrs. Norris, when she came on the morrow, in consequence of an early call and invitation from Sir Thomas, was in a very ill humor, and seemed intent only on lessening her niece’s pleasure, both present and future, as much as possible.
“Upon my word, Fanny, you are in high luck to meet with such attention and indulgence! You ought to be very much obliged to Mrs. Grant for thinking of you, and to your aunt for letting you go, and you ought to look upon it as something extraordinary: for I hope you are aware that there is no real occasion for your going into company in this sort of way, or ever dining out at all; and it is what you must not depend upon ever being repeated. Nor must you be fancying, that the invitation is meant as any particular compliment to you; the compliment is intended to your uncle and aunt, and me. Mrs. Grant thinks it a civility due to us to take a little notice of you, or else it would never have come into her head, and you may be very certain, that if your cousin Julia had been at home, you would not have been asked at all.”
Mrs. Norris had now so ingeniously done away all Mrs. Grant’s part of the favor, that Fanny, who found herself expected to speak, could only say that she was very much obliged to her aunt Bertram for sparing her, and that she was endeavoring to put her aunt’s evening work in such a state as to prevent her being missed.
“Oh! depend upon it, your aunt can do very well without you, or you would not be allowed to go. I shall be here, so you may be quite easy about your aunt. And I hope you will have a very agreeable day and find it all mighty delightful. But I must observe, that five is the very awkwardest of all possible numbers to sit down to table; and I cannot but be surprised that such an elegant lady as Mrs. Grant should not contrive better! And round their enormous great wide table too, which fills up the room so dreadfully! Had the Doctor been contented to take my dining table when I came away, as anybody in their senses would have done, instead of having that absurd new one of his own, which is wider, literally wider than the dinner table here—how infinitely better it would have been! and how much more he would have been respected! for people are never respected when they step out of their proper sphere. Remember that, Fanny. Five, only five to be sitting round that table! However, you will have dinner enough on it for ten I dare say.”