"I am astonished, my dear," said Mrs. Bennet, "that you should
be so ready to think your own children silly. If I wished to think
slightingly of anybody's children, it should not be of my own,
however."

"If my children are silly, I must hope to be always sensible of it."

"Yes--but as it happens, they are all of them very clever."

"This is the only point, I flatter myself, on which we do not
agree. I had hoped that our sentiments coincided in every
particular, but I must so far differ from you as to think our two
youngest daughters uncommonly foolish."

"My dear Mr. Bennet, you must not expect such girls to have
the sense of their father and mother. When they get to our age, I
dare say they will not think about officers any more than we do.
I remember the time when I liked a red coat myself very well--and,
indeed, so I do still at my heart; and if a smart young colonel,
with five or six thousand a year, should want one of my girls I
shall not say nay to him; and I thought Colonel Forster looked
very becoming the other night at Sir William's in his regimentals."

"Mamma," cried Lydia, "my aunt says that Colonel Forster and
Captain Carter do not go so often to Miss Watson's as they did
when they first came; she sees them now very often standing in
Clarke's library."

Mrs. Bennet was prevented replying by the entrance of the
footman with a note for Miss Bennet; it came from Netherfield,