Free Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons by Jane Austen, Vera Nazarian Page B

an open carriage, Miss Morland?”
    Catherine spoke, glancing as little as possible at the lumbering ogre at her side. “Yes, very; I have hardly ever an opportunity of being in one; but I am particularly fond of it.”
    “I am glad of it; I will drive you out in mine every day.”
    “Thank you,” said Catherine, in some distress, from a doubt of the propriety of accepting such an offer, and from the small matter of whom the offer came from.
    “I will drive you up Lansdown Hill tomorrow.”
    “No! No! No!”
    The angelic chorus of protest was so loud that it eclipsed all other street noises.
    “Oh, hush!—choo!” sneezed Catherine, and widened her eyes meaningfully at the darting figures of Lawrence, inches from her nose, and Clarence and Terence at both her ears, plus a dozen or so unnamed seraphs pulling at her hair and bonnet and petticoats.
    “Thank you; but will not your horse want rest?” she then managed to utter.
    “Rest! He has only come three and twenty miles today; all nonsense; nothing ruins horses so much as rest; nothing knocks them up so soon. No, no; I shall exercise mine at the average of four hours every day while I am here.” As Thorpe spoke with animation, the heat in his immediate vicinity shot up at least five more degrees.
    “Shall you indeed!” said Catherine very seriously, removing a handkerchief to wipe her brow and the tip of her nose. “That will be forty miles a day.”
    “Forty! Aye, fifty, for what I care. Maybe even sixty! Nay, why stop there—seventy! Well, I will drive you up Lansdown tomorrow; mind, I am engaged.”
    “How delightful that will be!” cried Isabella, turning round, and bringing a much-needed cooling weather front, which Catherine momentarily appreciated—that is, before she felt her moist brow start to rime over. “My dearest Catherine, I quite envy you; but I am afraid, brother, you will not have room for a third.”
    “A third indeed! No, no; I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters about; that would be a good joke, faith! Morland must take care of you.”
    Angels were verily colliding in the air between them all.
    James Morland, meanwhile, pulled out his own handkerchief, and started to mutter about blasted unseasonable cold and rotten heat at this time of the year, and how, dare say, one could hardly keep up with the flux of it all, in the span of minutes, it seemed . . .
    This was followed by a dialogue of civilities between James and Isabella, as they now all milled about in one grouping. And it started to rain yet again, so that even the passerby stared at the precipitation of about three feet in diameter, as if a single watering pail was being emptied from far up in the heavens directly over their spot. One matron stopped, saying, “Upon my word, one sees it all in Bath!” and graciously offered them her umbrella.
    But Catherine heard neither the particulars nor the result. As they resumed walking, distancing the two nephilim from each other, the rain ceased. And Catherine’s brutish companion’s discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated thunder-and-brimstone pitch to nothing more than grunts of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met.
    And Catherine—after listening and agreeing as long as she could, with all the civil deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opposite opinion to a large-toothed ogre—ventured at last to vary the tedious subject to one uppermost in her thoughts: “Have you ever read Udolpho, Mr. Thorpe?”
    “ Udolpho! Oh, Lord! Not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do.”
    Catherine, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologize for her question, but she received angelic succor.
    “Fie! One might wonder, dear child, if this one ever reads at all!” said Clarence, or maybe Terence.
    And Thorpe prevented her by saying, “Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones , except The Monk; I read