"Worth doing! yes, indeed," said Dorothea, energetically, forgetting
her previous small vexations. "I think we deserve to be beaten out of
our beautiful houses with a scourge of small cords--all of us who let
tenants live in such sties as we see round us. Life in cottages might
be happier than ours, if they were real houses fit for human beings
from whom we expect duties and affections."
"Will you show me your plan?"
"Yes, certainly. I dare say it is very faulty. But I have been
examining all the plans for cottages in Loudon's book, and picked out
what seem the best things. Oh what a happiness it would be to set the
pattern about here! I think instead of Lazarus at the gate, we should
put the pigsty cottages outside the park-gate."
Dorothea was in the best temper now. Sir James, as brother in-law,
building model cottages on his estate, and then, perhaps, others being
built at Lowick, and more and more elsewhere in imitation--it would be
as if the spirit of Oberlin had passed over the parishes to make the
life of poverty beautiful!
Sir James saw all the plans, and took one away to consult upon with
Lovegood. He also took away a complacent sense that he was making
great progress in Miss Brooke's good opinion. The Maltese puppy was
not offered to Celia; an omission which Dorothea afterwards thought of
with surprise; but she blamed herself for it. She had been engrossing
Sir James. After all, it was a relief that there was no puppy to tread
upon.
Celia was present while the plans were being examined, and observed Sir
James's illusion. "He thinks that Dodo cares about him, and she only
cares about her plans. Yet I am not certain that she would refuse him
if she thought he would let her manage everything and carry out all her
notions. And how very uncomfortable Sir James would be! I cannot bear
notions."
It was Celia's private luxury to indulge in this dislike. She dared
not confess it to her sister in any direct statement, for that would be
laying herself open to a demonstration that she was somehow or other at
war with all goodness. But on safe opportunities, she had an indirect
mode of making her negative wisdom tell upon Dorothea, and calling her
down from her rhapsodic mood by reminding her that people were staring,
not listening. Celia was not impulsive: what she had to say could
wait, and came from her always with the same quiet staccato evenness.
When people talked with energy and emphasis she watched their faces and
features merely. She never could understand how well-bred persons
consented to sing and open their mouths in the ridiculous manner
requisite for that vocal exercise.