Netherfield.
“’Tis an etiquette I despise,” said he. “If he wants our society, let

him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not spend my hours in

running after my neighbours every time they go away and come back

again.”
“Well, all I know is, that it will be abominably rude if you do not wait

on him. But, however, that shan’t prevent my asking him to dine here, I

am determined. We must have Mrs. Long and the Gouldings soon. That will

make thirteen with ourselves, so there will be just room at table for

him.”
Consoled by this resolution, she was the better able to bear her

husband’s incivility; though it was very mortifying to know that her

neighbours might all see Mr. Bingley, in consequence of it, before

they did. As the day of his arrival drew near,—
“I begin to be sorry that he comes at all,” said Jane to her sister. “It

would be nothing; I could see him with perfect indifference; but I can

hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well;

but she does not know, no one can know, how much I suffer from what she

says. Happy shall I be when his stay at Netherfield is over!”
“I wish I could say anything to comfort you,” replied Elizabeth; “but it

is wholly out of my power. You must feel it; and the usual satisfaction

of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied me, because you have

always so much.”
Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants,

contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety

and fretfulness on her side be as long as it could. She counted the days

that{409} must intervene before their invitation could be sent—hopeless of

seeing him before. But on the third morning after his arrival in

Hertfordshire, she saw him from her dressing-room window enter the

paddock, and ride towards the house.
Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane resolutely

kept her place at the table; but Elizabeth, to satisfy her mother, went