"Impudent fellow," said Mrs. Watson, going up and pretending to pat his cheek; he caught her hand and told her in return, she was his prisoner now, and must pay the penalty of the box on the ear, which she had so deliberately bestowed on him. She giggled exceedingly, and he was insisting on his right, when Robert entered the room and said, in a cool off-hand way:
"I suppose, Margaret, Musgrove has told you he wants to marry this day three weeks, and as I presume, you have no objection, I have resolved to get the settlements in hand immediately. I suppose you have not much to do in the way of preparation, have you?"
"Well, I suppose, as you all come upon me so suddenly, there is nothing for me to do but to submit," said Margaret, "and really, I see no harm in it. Of course you will have the marriage put in the newspapers; it must be sent to 'The Morning Post,' Tom."
"I have no objection," observed the ardent lover.
"Well then, Jane, I suppose I had better be seeing about my gown and wedding clothes—will you come with me and help me choose some dresses, Tom?"
"Not I, by Jove! what do I know about dresses, I tell you!—it's all woman's nonsense, and I will have nothing to do with it. I believe if a woman were dying, her only care would be to secure a handsome shawl—and the idea of a plain funeral would break her heart."
"Don't be so dreadfully severe, Tom," interposed Mrs. Watson again, "you are a naughty, spiteful, ill-tempered satirist, and we must teach you better manners before we have done with you."
"Beyond a question you will soon do that," returned he, "I already feel wonderfully humbled and penitent, from sitting with you for the last hour; and what I shall arrive at, after being your brother for a twelvemonth, can only be guessed at now."
Margaret and Jane soon afterwards set off on the important business of looking for wedding dresses, and purchasing more clothes than she would know what to do with, whilst obliged to wear her deep mourning—a circumstance which was particularly distressing to Margaret—who, whilst anxious to make a very splendid figure in her new establishment, was perpetually checked in her aspirations by the remembrance that she must, for many months, continue to wear black. It was, however, a great delight to her to think that she should be married almost as soon as Penelope, and before Elizabeth; but, since her own good luck was now certain, she felt no particular envy of either of her elder sisters; for, though she could not help seeing that Elizabeth's establishment, house and carriage, would be more expensive and grand than her own, she did not think that she would have given up the independence and idleness of Tom's situation as a gentleman, for the large income and luxuries accompanying the brewer's occupation.
Emma looked on and wondered at Margaret's state of contentment under the indifference and contemptuous treatment which her lover bestowed on her. She would not have borne it for a single hour; but Margaret seemed to feel nothing of it—and her own foolish and caressingly fond ways, were enough to disgust a sensible man altogether.