both, had they appeared to be wrong, she could no more explain such

behaviour than her sister.
Mr. Collins on his return highly gratified Mrs. Bennet by admiring Mrs.

Philips’s manners and politeness. He protested that, except Lady

Catherine and her daughter, he had never seen a more elegant woman; for

she had not only received him with the utmost civility, but had even

pointedly included him in her invitation for the next evening, although

utterly unknown to her before. Something, he supposed, might be

attributed to his connection with them, but yet he had never met with so

much attention in the whole course of his life.{95}

CHAPTER XVI.

AS no objection was made to the young people’s engagement with their

aunt, and all Mr. Collins’s scruples of leaving Mr. and Mrs. Bennet for

a single evening during his visit were most steadily resisted, the coach

conveyed him and his five cousins at a suitable hour to Meryton; and the

girls had the pleasure of hearing, as they entered the drawing-room,

that Mr. Wickham had{96} accepted their uncle’s invitation, and was then in

the house.
When this information was given, and they had all taken their seats, Mr.

Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire, and he was so much

struck with the size and furniture of the apartment, that he declared he

might almost have supposed himself in the small summer breakfast parlour

at Rosings; a comparison that did not at first convey much

gratification; but when Mrs. Philips understood from him what Rosings

was, and who was its proprietor, when she had listened to the

description of only one of Lady Catherine’s drawing-rooms, and found

that the chimney-piece alone had cost eight hundred pounds, she felt all

the force of the compliment, and would hardly have resented a comparison

with the housekeeper’s room.
In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her mansion,

with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble abode, and the