“My dear Sir Thomas!” yelped Mrs. Norris, red with anger and beginning to growl in an undertone of a hound whose bone is suddenly threatened, “Fanny can walk.”

“Walk!” repeated Sir Thomas, in a tone of most unanswerable dignity, and coming farther into the room. “My niece walk to a dinner engagement at this time of the year! Will twenty minutes after four suit you?”

“Yes, sir,” was Fanny’s humble answer, given with the feelings almost of a criminal towards Mrs. Norris. She followed her uncle out of the room, having staid behind him only long enough to hear these words spoken in angry agitation—

“Quite unnecessary! a great deal too kind! But Edmund goes; true, it is upon Edmund’s account. I observed he was hoarse on Thursday night.”

But this could not impose on Fanny. She felt that the carriage was for herself, and herself alone: and her uncle’s consideration of her, coming immediately after such representations from her aunt, cost her some tears of gratitude when she was alone.

The coachman drove round to a minute; Sir Thomas saw them off in punctuality.

“Now I must look at you, Fanny,” said Edmund, with the kind smile of an affectionate brother, “and tell you how I like you. As well as I can judge by this light, you look very nicely indeed. What have you got on?”

“The new dress that my uncle was so good as to give me on my cousin’s marriage. I thought I ought to wear it as soon as I could, and that I might not have such another opportunity all the winter. I hope you do not think me too fine.”

“A woman can never be too fine while she is all in white. No, I see no finery about you; nothing but what is perfectly proper. Your gown seems very pretty. I like these glossy spots. Has not Miss Crawford a gown something the same?”

In approaching the Parsonage they passed close by the stable-yard and coach-house, where the grooms with terrible peeling complexions were shuffling about in strange lumbering slow-motion.

“Heyday!” said Edmund, “here’s company, here’s a carriage! who have they got to meet us, alongside these buffoonish fellows?” And letting down the side-glass to distinguish, “’Tis Crawford’s, Crawford’s barouche, I protest! There must be his own two men pushing it back into its old quarters, and not doing too fine a job of it I must say—odd, how they stumble about! He is here, of course. This is quite a surprise, Fanny. I shall be very glad to see him.”

There was no occasion, there was no time for Fanny to say how very differently she felt; but the idea of having such another to observe her was a great increase of the trepidation with which she walked into the drawing-room.