Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters Read Free Page B

to Elinor than she considered their serious attachment as certain, and looked forward to their marriage as rapidly approaching.
    “In a few months, my dear Marianne,” said she, as they sat one day, carefully skinning catfish flanks and cutting the meat into bite-size chunks, “Elinor will, in all probability, be settled for life. We shall miss her, but
she
will be happy.”
    “Oh, Mama, how shall we do without her?”
    “My love, it will be scarcely a separation. We shall live within a fewmiles of each other, and shall meet every day of our lives. You will gain a brother, a real, affectionate brother. I have the highest opinion in the world of Edward’s heart. But you look grave, Marianne; do you feel some burden of sympathy for the beasts we painstakingly prepare and are soon to consume? Never forget that each bite represents a victory that must be savored, exactly as
they
would savor a victory over
us.
Or is it that you disapprove your sister’s choice?”
    “Perhaps both,” said Marianne. “I may consider the match with some surprise. Edward is very amiable, and I love him tenderly. But yet—he is not the kind of young man—there is a something wanting—his figure is not striking. It has none of the grace which I should expect in the man who could seriously attach my sister. His eyes want all that spirit, that fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence. And besides all this, I am afraid, Mama, he has no real taste. Music seems scarcely to attract him; and, though he admires Elinor’s driftwood statuettes very much, it is not the admiration of a person who can understand their worth. He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united, like two sea horses amorously intertwined in their watery rendezvous. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings: the same books, the same music must charm us both. Oh Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward’s reading to us of the diary of those shipwrecked sailors last night. Even during the passage where the doomed sun-mad protagonist realises with a start that the fellow seaman upon whom he has relied for comfort and protection is but a bucket balanced on the end of a mop! To hear those haunting lines, which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!”
    “He would certainly have done more justice to simple and elegant prose. I thought so at the time; but you had to give him the diary of the shipwrecked sailors!”
    “Well, it really is my favourite. But we must allow for differences. Elinor has not my feelings, and therefore she may overlook it, and behappy with him. But it would have broken my heart, had I loved him, to hear him read with so little sensibility. Mama, the more I know of the world the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love, and rely upon to protect me! I require so much!”
    “I know, dear.”
    “The man I choose must have all Edward’s virtues, and his person and manners must ornament his goodness with every possible charm.”
    “Remember, my love, that you are not seventeen. It is yet too early in life to despair of such a happiness. Why should you be less fortunate than your mother?”

CHAPTER 4
    W HAT A PITY IT IS , Elinor,” said Marianne, “that Edward should have no taste for fashioning attractive miniatures out of driftwood.”
    “No taste for it!” replied Elinor. “Why shouldn’t you think so? He does not whittle driftwood himself, indeed, but he has great pleasure in observing and admiring the efforts of other people; and I assure you he is by no means deficient in natural taste, though he has not had opportunities of improving it. Had he ever been in the way of learning, of instruction on the handling of a long bent knife, I think he would have whittled very well. He distrusts his own judgment in such