—­ always so smooth and so dry; and the abbey in itself was no more to her now than any other house.  The painful remembrance of the folly it had helped to nourish and perfect was the only emotion which could spring from a consideration of the building.  What a revolution in her ideas!  She, who had so longed to be in an abbey!  Now, there was nothing so charming to her imagination as the unpretending comfort of a well-connected parsonage, something like Fullerton, but better:  Fullerton had its faults, but Woodston probably had none.  If Wednesday should ever come!

It did come, and exactly when it might be reasonably looked for.  It came —­ it was fine —­ and Catherine trod on air.  By ten o’clock, the chaise and four conveyed the two from the abbey; and, after an agreeable drive of almost twenty miles, they entered Woodston, a large and populous village, in a situation not unpleasant.  Catherine was ashamed to say how pretty she thought it, as the general seemed to think an apology necessary for the flatness of the country, and the size of the village; but in her heart she preferred it to any place she had ever been at, and looked with great admiration at every neat house above the rank of a cottage, and at all the little chandler’s shops which they passed.  At the further end of the village, and tolerably disengaged from the rest of it, stood the parsonage, a new-built substantial stone house, with its semicircular sweep and green gates; and, as they drove up to the door, Henry, with the friends of his solitude, a large Newfoundland puppy and two or three terriers, was ready to receive and make much of them.

Catherine’s mind was too full, as she entered the house, for her either to observe or to say a great deal; and, till called on by the general for her opinion of it, she had very little idea of the room in which she was sitting.  Upon looking round it then, she perceived in a moment that it was the most comfortable room in the world; but she was too guarded to say so, and the coldness of her praise disappointed him.

“We are not calling it a good house,” said he.  “We are not comparing it with Fullerton and Northanger —­ we are considering it as a mere parsonage, small and confined, we allow, but decent, perhaps, and habitable; and altogether not inferior to the generality; or, in other words, I believe there are few country parsonages in England half so good.  It may admit of improvement, however.  Far be it from me to say otherwise; and anything in reason —­ a bow thrown out, perhaps —­ though, between ourselves, if there is one thing more than another my aversion, it is a patched-on bow.”

Catherine did not hear enough of this speech to understand or be pained by it; and other subjects being studiously brought forward and supported by Henry, at the same time that a tray full of refreshments was introduced by his servant, the general was shortly restored to his complacency, and Catherine to all her usual ease of spirits.