apiece; but under the persuasion of his wife he finally resolved that it
would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more
for his father's widow and children than such kind of neighbourly acts
as looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to
remove their things, and sending them presents of fish and game whenever
they were in season.

Taking account of this resolve, as expressed in Mr. John Dashwood's
frequent talk of the increasing expenses of housekeeping, and of the
perpetual demands made upon his purse, and exasperated, too, by the
manifest disapprobation with which Mrs. John Dashwood looked upon the
growing attachment between her own brother, Edward Ferrars, and Elinor,
Mrs. Henry Dashwood and her daughters left their old home with some
abruptness and went to live in Devonshire, where their old friend, Sir
John Middleton, of Barton Park, had provided them with a cottage close
to his own place.

Elinor, the eldest of the daughters, possessed a strength of
understanding and coolness of judgment which qualified her, though only
nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently
to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in
Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence. She had an
excellent heart. Her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were
strong; but she knew how to govern them. It was a knowledge which her
mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never
to be taught. Marianne's abilities were, in many respects, quite equal
to Elinor's. She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her
sorrows, her joys could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable,
interesting; she was everything but prudent. The resemblance between her
and her mother was strikingly great, and her excess of sensibility,