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Pride & Prejudice – page 133

Pride and Prejudice

what Rosings was, and who was its proprietorwhen

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 digres-

sions 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

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