‘It wasn’t my fault if my poor father would send such an amiable youth into a large family. Men with daughters should
not take pupils. I did my best to cure both her and myself, but I had better have fought it out at once when she was younger and prettier, and might have been more conformable, and not so countrified, as you’ll grow, Phœbe, if you stay rusting here, nursing my mother and reading philosophy with Miss Fennimore. If you set up to scold me, you had better make things easy for me.’
Phœbe thought for a few moments, and then said, ‘I see plainly what you ought to do, but I cannot understand that this makes it proper to ask my mother to give up her own house, that she was born to. I suppose you would call it childish to propose your living with us; but we could almost form two establishments.’
‘My dear child, Cecily would go and devote herself to my mother. I should never have any good out of her, and she would get saddled for life with Maria.’
‘Maria is my charge,’ said Phœbe, coldly.
‘And what will your husband say to that?’
‘He shall never be my husband unless I have the means of making her happy.’
‘Ay, there would be a frenzy of mutual generosity, and she would be left to us. No; I’m not going to set up housekeeping with Maria for an ingredient.’
‘There is the Underwood.’
‘Designed by nature for a dowager-house. That would do very well for you and my mother, though Cheltenham or Brighton might be better. Yes, it might do. You would be half a mile nearer your dear Miss Charlecote.’