“The Crown!”

“Yes; if you and Mr. Woodhouse see no objection, and I trust you cannot, my father hopes his friends will be so kind as to visit him there.  Better accommodations, he can promise them, and not a less grateful welcome than at Randalls.  It is his own idea.  Mrs. Weston sees no objection to it, provided you are satisfied.  This is what we all feel.  Oh! you were perfectly right!  Ten couple, in either of the Randalls rooms, would have been insufferable!—­Dreadful!—­I felt how right you were the whole time, but was too anxious for securing any thing to like to yield.  Is not it a good exchange?—­You consent—­ I hope you consent?”

“It appears to me a plan that nobody can object to, if Mr. and Mrs. Weston do not.  I think it admirable; and, as far as I can answer for myself, shall be most happy—­It seems the only improvement that could be.  Papa, do you not think it an excellent improvement?”

She was obliged to repeat and explain it, before it was fully comprehended; and then, being quite new, farther representations were necessary to make it acceptable.

“No; he thought it very far from an improvement—­a very bad plan—­ much worse than the other.  A room at an inn was always damp and dangerous; never properly aired, or fit to be inhabited.  If they must dance, they had better dance at Randalls.  He had never been in the room at the Crown in his life—­did not know the people who kept it by sight.—­Oh! no—­a very bad plan.  They would catch worse colds at the Crown than anywhere.”

“I was going to observe, sir,” said Frank Churchill, “that one of the great recommendations of this change would be the very little danger of any body’s catching cold—­ so much less danger at the Crown than at Randalls!  Mr. Perry might have reason to regret the alteration, but nobody else could.”

“Sir,” said Mr. Woodhouse, rather warmly, “you are very much mistaken if you suppose Mr. Perry to be that sort of character.  Mr. Perry is extremely concerned when any of us are ill.  But I do not understand how the room at the Crown can be safer for you than your father’s house.”

“From the very circumstance of its being larger, sir.  We shall have no occasion to open the windows at all—­not once the whole evening; and it is that dreadful habit of opening the windows, letting in cold air upon heated bodies, which (as you well know, sir) does the mischief.”

“Open the windows!—­but surely, Mr. Churchill, nobody would think of opening the windows at Randalls.  Nobody could be so imprudent!  I never heard of such a thing.  Dancing with open windows!—­I am sure, neither your father nor Mrs. Weston (poor Miss Taylor that was) would suffer it.”

“Ah! sir—­but a thoughtless young person will sometimes step behind a window-curtain, and throw up a sash, without its being suspected.  I have often known it done myself.”