"
Mr. Crawford bowed his thanks.
"Sir Thomas," said Edmund, "undoubtedly understands
the duty of a parish priest. We must hope his son
may prove that _he_ knows it too."
Whatever effect Sir Thomas's little harangue might really
produce on Mr. Crawford, it raised some awkward sensations
in two of the others, two of his most attentive listeners--
Miss Crawford and Fanny. One of whom, having never before
understood that Thornton was so soon and so completely
to be his home, was pondering with downcast eyes on what it
would be _not_ to see Edmund every day; and the other,
startled from the agreeable fancies she had been previously
indulging on the strength of her brother's description,
no longer able, in the picture she had been forming of a
future Thornton, to shut out the church, sink the clergyman,
and see only the respectable, elegant, modernised,
and occasional residence of a man of independent fortune,
was considering Sir Thomas, with decided ill-will,
as the destroyer of all this, and suffering the more
from that involuntary forbearance which his character
and manner commanded, and from not daring to relieve
herself by a single attempt at throwing ridicule on his cause.
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