Chapter 10 49
" I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend pens remarkably well."
" Thank you--but I always mend my own." " How can you contrive to write so even?" He was silent.
" Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp; and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss Grantley ' s."
" Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again? At present I have not room to do them justice."
" Oh! it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?"
" They are generally long; but whether always charming it is not for me to determine."
" It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill."
" That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline," cried her brother, " because he does not write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?"
" My style of writing is very different from yours."
" Oh!" cried Miss Bingley, " Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest."
" My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them--by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents."