CHAPTER IX
The next day Mr. Watson was taken seriously ill; and though he lingered for some weeks, his daughters were almost completely cut off from all social intercourse.
Towards Christmas he died.
Everything was overshadowed by the sense of loss; but Emma found that she could be still more lonely, when, on receipt of a kind letter from Mrs. Blake, she learned that she had taken a house in London, in order to put Charles to school; and that Mr. Howard had been called to Cumberland to the bedside of a relative who had had a stroke.
The Osbornes had gone abroad.
The clergyman who had been doing duty for Mr. Watson, had been appointed to the parish; but with great consideration had begged them not to move till the following March; so that they might have sufficient leisure to dispose of their furniture, and to make their arrangements.
Penelope had returned for some time, and Emma had learned to dread the sound of her sharp voice. She and Margaret quarrelled perpetually. There seemed never to be any peace in the house. Her ill-humour was aggravated by her friends, the Shaws, having secured a situation for her as assistant teacher in a private seminary; for not only was she averse to this position, but she felt, even more keenly, that it was a tacit acknowledgment of the fatal obduracy of the heart, she had wasted so much time in endeavouring to subdue.
Margaret had got an engagement as companion to a delicate girl.
Emma's case was the hardest. She was to find her home with Robert and Jane, who openly discussed her prospects of making a good match. In vain she pleaded her desire to take a situation, like her sisters. Robert would not hear of it. She had already received ill-treatment enough from her family, he affirmed, and he would do his best to give her a good chance. Even Elizabeth joined her voice to her brother's.