'What do you mean by people?' said Anne.
'The dull, respectable, common-place gentry, who make up the mass of mankind,' said Elizabeth.
'Do they?' said Anne.
'Do not they?' said Elizabeth.
'I do not know what the mass of mankind may be at Abbeychurch,' said Anne, 'but I am sure the people whom we see oftenest at home, are such as I think it a privilege to know.' And she began to enumerate these friends.
'Oh! Anne,' interrupted Elizabeth, 'do not, for pity's sake, make me discontented; here am I in Abbeychurch, and must make the best of it. I must be as polite and hypocritical as I can make myself. I must waste my time and endure dullness.'
'As to waste of time,' said Anne, 'perhaps it is most usefully employed in what is so irksome as you find being in company. Mamma has always wished me to remember, that acquiring knowledge may after all be but a selfish gratification, and many things ought to be attended to first.'
'That doctrine would not do for everybody,' said Elizabeth.
'No,' said Anne, 'but it does for us; and you will see it plainer, if you remember on what authority it is said that all knowledge is profitable for nothing without charity.'
'Charity, yes,' said Elizabeth; 'but Christian love is a very different thing from drawing-room civility.'