 to foresee
with her usual cheerfulness, a variety of advantages that would accrue to them
all, from this separation.
    »I am delighted with the plan,« she cried, »it is exactly what I could wish.
Margaret and I shall be as much benefited by it as yourselves. When you and the
Middletons are gone, we shall go on so quietly and happily together with our
books and our music! You will find Margaret so improved when you come back
again! And I have a little plan of alteration for your bedrooms too, which may
now be performed without inconvenience to any one. It is very right that you
should go to town; I would have every young woman of your condition in life,
acquainted with the manners and amusements of London. You will be under the care
of a motherly good sort of woman, of whose kindness to you I can have no doubt.
And in all probability you will see your brother, and whatever may be his
faults, or the faults of his wife, when I consider whose son he is, I cannot
bear to have you so wholly estranged from each other.«
    »Though with your usual anxiety for our happiness,« said Elinor, »you have
been obviating every impediment to the present scheme which occurred to you,
there is still one objection which, in my opinion, cannot be so easily removed.«
    Marianne's countenance sunk.
    »And what,« said Mrs. Dashwood, »is my dear prudent Elinor going to suggest?
What formidable obstacle is she now to bring forward? Do not let me hear a word
about the expense of it.«
    »My objection is this; though I think very well of Mrs. Jennings' heart, she
is not a woman whose society can afford us pleasure, or whose protection will
give us consequence.«
    »That is very true,« replied her mother; »but of her society, separately
from that of other people, you will scarcely have any thing at all, and you will
almost always appear in public with Lady Middleton.«
    »If Elinor is frightened away by her dislike of Mrs. Jennings,« said
Marianne, »at least it need not prevent my accepting her invitation. I have no
such scruples, and I am sure, I could put up with every unpleasantness of that
kind with very little effort.«
    Elinor could not help smiling at this display of indifference towards the
manners of a person, to whom she had often had difficulty in persuading Marianne
to behave with tolerable politeness: and resolved within herself, that if her
