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proof of good principles, professional knowledge, energy, courage, and cheerfulness everything that
could deserve or promise well. Young as he was, William had already seen a great deal. He had been in
the Mediterranean in the West Indies in the Mediterranean again had been often taken on shore by
the favor of his Captain, and in the course of seven years had known every variety of danger, which sea
and war together could offer. With such means in his power he had a right to be listened to; and though
Mrs. Norris could fidget about the room, and disturb everybody in quest of two needlefulls of thread or a
second hand shirt button in the midst of her nephew's account of a shipwreck or an engagement,
everybody else was attentive; and even Lady Bertram could not hear of such horrors unmoved, or
without sometimes lifting her eyes from her work to say, "Dear me! how disagreeable. I wonder
anybody can ever go to sea."
To Henry Crawford they gave a different feeling. He longed to have been at sea, and seen and done and
suffered as much. His heart was warmed, his fancy fired, and he felt the highest respect for a lad who,
before he was twenty, had gone through such bodily hardships, and given such proofs of mind. The glory
of heroism, of usefulness, of exertion, of endurance, made his own habits of selfish indulgence appear in
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shameful contrast; and he wished he had been a William Price, distinguishing himself and working his way
to fortune and consequence with so much self-respect and happy ardor, instead of what he was!
The wish was rather eager than lasting. He was roused from the reverie of retrospection and regret
produced by it, by some inquiry from Edmund as to his plans for the next day's hunting; and he found it
was as well to be a man of fortune at once with horses and grooms at his command. In one respect it
was better, as it gave him the means of conferring a kindness where he wished to oblige. With spirits,
courage, and curiosity up to anything, William expressed an inclination to hunt; and Crawford could
mount him without the slightest inconvenience to himself, and with only some scruples to obviate in Sir
Thomas, who knew better than his nephew the value of such a loan, and some alarms to reason away in
Fanny. She feared for William; by no means convinced by all that he could relate of his own
horsemanship in various countries, of the scrambling parties in which he had been engaged, the rough
horses and mules he had ridden, or his many narrow escapes from dreadful falls, that he was at all equal
to the management of a high-fed hunter in an English fox-chase; nor till he returned safe and well, without
accident or discredit, could she be reconciled to the risk, or feel any of that obligation to Mr. Crawford
for lending the horse which he had fully intended it should produce. When it was proved however to have
done William no harm, she could allow it to be a kindness, and even reward the owner with a smile when
the animal was one minute tendered to his use again; and the next, with the greatest cordiality, and in a
manner not to be resisted, made over to his use entirely so long as he remained in Northamptonshire.
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Chapter 25
The intercourse of the two families was at this period more nearly restored to what it had been in the
autumn, than any member of the old intimacy had thought ever likely to be again. The return of Henry
Crawford, and the arrival of William Price, had much to do with it, but much was still owing to Sir
Thomas's more than toleration of the neighborly attempts at the Parsonage. His mind, now disengaged
from the cares which had pressed on him at first, was at leisure to find the Grants and their young inmates
really worth visiting; and though infinitely above scheming or contriving for any the most advantageous
matrimonial establishment that could be among the apparent possibilities of any one most dear to him,
and disdaining even as a littleness the being quick-sighted on such points, he could not avoid perceiving in
a grand and careless way that Mr. Crawford was somewhat distinguishing his niece nor perhaps refrain
(though unconsciously) from giving a more willing assent to invitations on that account.
His readiness, however, in agreeing to dine at the Parsonage, when the general invitation was at last
hazarded, after many debates and many doubts as to whether it were worth while, "because Sir Thomas
seemed so ill inclined! and Lady Bertram was so indolent!" proceeded from good breeding and
goodwill alone, and had nothing to do with Mr. Crawford, but as being one in an agreeable group; for it
was in the course of that very visit, that he first began to think, that any one in the habit of such idle
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