She shuts their mouths unexpectedly. “It was his civil way of letting you know that he was tired! You know that with strangers and invalids a little of you goes a long way.”
The explanation is not flattering, but is received without offence.
The Rectory adieux to the newly found hero are made much earlier than his votaries think at all necessary or desirable. But though a few moments before Lavinia’s entry, he had stoutly denied the accusation of fatigue and the offer of departure, a quarter of an hour later he tamely acquiesces in both.
“You will come again soon, and bring the Siege Train,” he says at parting, and with something that might be compunctious in his tone, to the disappointed children; “and I’ll tell you all I know about Bobs. I do not think it is nearly as much as you know yourselves,” he adds laughing.
He shakes hands with Phillida and Daphne, and kisses Serena and the poodle—the latter by request—and they are gone.
Strong emotion is often the unexpected parent of platitude. It is the mind at ease that has leisure to sharpen the epigram and fire the bon-mot, and nothing can be more banal than the short phrases exchanged between the young pair whom the departure of the Darcys has left quivering and tingling with a sense of each other’s proximity.
“What capital children!”
“Yes, aren’t they?”
“And she, the mother, is one of the best, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.”