CHAPTER 30

Catherine’s disposition was not naturally sedentary, nor had her habits been ever very industrious; but whatever might hitherto have been her defects of that sort, her mother could not but perceive them now to be greatly increased.  She could neither sit still nor employ herself for ten minutes together, walking round the garden and orchard again and again, as if nothing but motion was voluntary; and it seemed as if she could even walk about the house rather than remain fixed for any time in the parlour.  Her loss of spirits was a yet greater alteration.  In her rambling and her idleness she might only be a caricature of herself; but in her silence and sadness she was the very reverse of all that she had been before.

For two days Mrs. Morland allowed it to pass even without a hint; but when a third night’s rest had neither restored her cheerfulness, improved her in useful activity, nor given her a greater inclination for needlework, she could no longer refrain from the gentle reproof of, “My dear Catherine, I am afraid you are growing quite a fine lady.  I do not know when poor Richard’s cravats would be done, if he had no friend but you.  Your head runs too much upon Bath; but there is a time for everything —­ a time for balls and plays, and a time for work.  You have had a long run of amusement, and now you must try to be useful.”

Catherine took up her work directly, saying, in a dejected voice, that “her head did not run upon Bath —­ much.”

“Then you are fretting about General Tilney, and that is very simple of you; for ten to one whether you ever see him again.  You should never fret about trifles.”  After a short silence —­ “I hope, my Catherine, you are not getting out of humour with home because it is not so grand as Northanger.  That would be turning your visit into an evil indeed.  Wherever you are you should always be contented, but especially at home, because there you must spend the most of your time.  I did not quite like, at breakfast, to hear you talk so much about the French bread at Northanger.”

“I am sure I do not care about the bread. it is all the same to me what I eat.”

“There is a very clever essay in one of the books upstairs upon much such a subject, about young girls that have been spoilt for home by great acquaintance —­ The Mirror, I think.  I will look it out for you some day or other, because I am sure it will do you good.”

Catherine said no more, and, with an endeavour to do right, applied to her work; but, after a few minutes, sunk again, without knowing it herself, into languor and listlessness, moving herself in her chair, from the irritation of weariness, much oftener than she moved her needle.  Mrs. Morland watched the progress of this relapse; and seeing, in her daughter’s absent and dissatisfied look, the full proof of that repining spirit to which she had now begun to attribute