Chapter 16 77
Chapter 16
As no objection was made to the young people ' s engagement with their aunt , and all Mr . Collins ' s scruples of leaving Mr . and Mrs . Bennet for a single evening during his visit were most steadily resisted , the coach conveyed him and his five cousins at a suitable hour to Meryton ; and the girls had the pleasure of hearing , as they entered the drawing-room , that Mr . Wickham had accepted their uncle ' s invitation , and was then in the house .
When this information was given , and they had all taken their seats , Mr . Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire , and he was so much struck with the size and furniture of the apartment , that he declared he might almost have supposed himself in the small summer breakfast parlour at Rosings ; a comparison that did not at first convey much gratification ; but when Mrs . Phillips understood from him what Rosings was , and who was its proprietor--when 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 digressions 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 a very creditable , gentlemanlike set , and the best of them were of the present party ; but Mr . Wickham was as far beyond them all in