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manners and
amusements of London—or at least such entertainments as the public assemblies can offer.’
    At this she gave Mary a look, which meant, ‘A public ball is quite good enough for you .’ Mary smiled. ‘In my experience, private balls are much pleasanter than public
ones. Most public balls suffer from two insurmountable disadvantages—a want of chairs, and a scarcity of men, and as often as not, a still greater scarcity of any that are good for
much.’
    ‘But that is exactly my own feeling on the subject! The company one meets at private balls is always so much more agreeable.’
    ‘As to that,’ replied Mary, ‘I confess I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.’
    She hazarded a side glance at her companion at this, wondering whether she was as accustomed to being treated with contempt, as she was to dispensing it, but Miss Price seemed serenely unaware
that such a remark could possibly refer to her.
    ‘Oh! My dear Miss Crawford,’ she said, ‘with so much to unite us, would it not be delightful to become better acquainted?’
    To be better acquainted, Mary soon found, was to be her lot, whatever her own views on the matter. This was the origin of the second intimacy Mary was to enjoy at Mansfield, one that had little
reality in the feelings of either party, and appeared to result principally from Miss Price’s desire to communicate her own far superior claims on Edmund, and teach Mary to avoid him.
    The weather remained fine, and Mary’s rides continued. The season, the scene, the air, were all delightful, and as the days passed Mr Norris began to be agreeable to her.
It was without any change in his manner—he remained as quiet and reserved as ever—but she found nonetheless that she liked to have him near her. Had she thought about it more, she might
have concluded that the anxiety and confusion she had endured since her uncle’s death had made her particularly susceptible to the charms of placidity and steadiness; but for reasons best
known to herself, Mary did not think very much about it. She had by no means forgotten Miss Price’s insinuations, and could not fail to notice Mrs Norris’s rather more pointed remarks;
and in the privacy of the parsonage her brother continued to ridicule Edmund as both stuffy and conceited. He began a small collection of his more pompous remarks, which he noted down in the back
of his pocket-book, and performed for his sisters with high glee, mimicking his victim’s rather prosing manner to absolute perfection. Perhaps Mary should have apprehended some thing of her
own feelings from the growing disquiet she felt at this continued raillery, but unwelcome as it was, she chose rather to censure Henry’s lack of manners, than her own lack of prudence.
    Mary rode every morning, and in the afternoons she sauntered about with Julia Bertram in the Mansfield woods, or—rather more reluctantly—walked with Miss Price in Mrs Grant’s
garden.
    ‘Every time I come into this shrubbery I am more struck with how much has been made of such unpromising scrubby dirt,’ said Miss Price, as they were thus sitting together one day.
‘Three years ago, this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field, never thought of as any thing, or capable of becoming any thing.’
    ‘It may seem partial in me to praise,’ replied Mary, looking around her, ‘but I must admire the taste my sister has shewn in all this. Even Henry approves of it, and his
good opinion is not so easily won in matters horticultural.’
    ‘I am so glad to see the evergreens thrive!’ answered Miss Price, who did not appear to have heard her. ‘The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the
evergreen!’
    But as Miss Price happened to have her eyes fixed at that moment on a particularly fine example of an elm, Mary merely smiled and said nothing.
    A few moments later, Miss Price began again in a