Anne does not need this visit to learn that three miles can change the whole conversation. She has always noticed how unknown, at Uppercross, are the affairs treated at Kellynch as public and interesting. She still comes full of the subject that has occupied both houses there for weeks, and she finds less curiosity than she expected. Mr and Mrs Musgrove ask what part of Bath Sir Walter and her sister will settle in, and they do not wait long for an answer. The young ladies hope to be in Bath themselves, in a good situation, none of your Queen Squares. Mary adds that she shall be pretty well off when they are all gone away to be happy at Bath. Anne resolves to avoid that self-delusion, and to be more grateful for Lady Russell, the one friend who does sympathise. She has at least two months here, and no dread of them. Mary is not so unsisterly as Elizabeth. The children love Anne nearly as well as their mother, and respect her more. Charles is civil, superior to his wife in sense and temper, and not of powers to make their old connection a dangerous thought. He does nothing with much zeal but sport. He and Mary might pass for a happy couple. They agree in wanting more money and a handsome present from his father, though he defends his father's right to spend as he likes. On the children he says he could manage them if Mary did not interfere. Mary says he spoils them. Anne is never tempted to tell her, "Very true."
What is least agreeable is being too much in the secret of both houses. Charles wishes she would persuade Mary not to fancy herself ill. Mary wishes Anne would persuade him that she is a great deal worse than she owns, and that he would not think anything the matter if he saw her dying. Mary hates sending the boys to the Great House, where their grandmamma humours them with trash and they come back sick. Mrs Musgrove wishes Mrs Charles had a little of Anne's method, and says the children are so spoilt that she invites them less often than she otherwise would. Mary reports that the Great House maids are gadding about the village and tempting Jemima. Mrs Musgrove has no good opinion of Mary's nursery-maid, always upon the gad and fine-dressing, and gives Anne the hint so she need not be afraid of mentioning anything amiss. At dinner Mary is not given the precedence she thinks due to her. Walking with only the Musgroves, one of them wishes somebody would hint that it would be more becoming in Mary not to put herself forward to take place of mamma. How is Anne to set all this to rights? She can do little more than listen, soften every grievance, and excuse each to the other, and make the broadest hints the ones meant for her sister.
In other respects the visit goes well. Three miles from Kellynch improve her spirits, and Mary's ailments lessen. They meet every morning and hardly spend an evening apart. Anne plays a great deal better than either Miss Musgrove, but she has no voice, no harp, and no fond parents to sit by and fancy themselves delighted. Her own playing is little thought of, except to refresh the others, and she knows she is giving pleasure only to herself. Except for one short period of her life, she has never, since fourteen and the loss of her mother, known the happiness of being listened to. Mr and Mrs Musgrove's partiality for their own daughters gives her more pleasure for their sakes than mortification for her own. The girls are wild for dancing. Anne prefers to play the country dances for the cousins who depend on the Musgroves for all their pleasures, and the hour of it draws the compliment that her little fingers fly about. So pass the first three weeks.
On the 29th of September her heart must be in Kellynch again. Mary, noting the day, exclaims that this is the day the Crofts were to come, and that she is glad she did not think of it before, it makes her so low. They take possession with naval alertness. Mary talks Charles into driving her over, and comes back in a comfortable state of imaginary agitation. Anne is glad there is no means of her going, and glad to be within when the visit is returned. Mrs Croft falls to her share. In the first half minute Anne is sure there is no knowledge and no suspicion on that side. Then Mrs Croft says it was Anne, and not her sister, that her brother had the pleasure of knowing when he was in this country. Anne had hoped she had outlived blushing. She had not outlived emotion. Perhaps, Mrs Croft adds, Anne has not heard that he is married. The next words show she means Mr Wentworth. Anne is happy she has said nothing which might not do for either brother, and ashamed to have forgotten how reasonable it is that Mrs Croft should speak of Edward, not of Frederick. Just as they move, the Admiral tells Mary they are expecting a brother of Mrs Croft's soon, and that she may know him by name. The little boys cut him short. Anne cannot be certain the same brother is still in question. That evening Louisa walks in ahead of the carriage, to leave room for the harp. Mamma is out of spirits, thinking of poor Richard, and the harp amuses her more than the piano. The Crofts happened to say that her brother, Captain Wentworth, is just returned, or paid off, and coming to see them almost directly. Mrs Musgrove has found, in her son's letters, that Wentworth was poor Richard's captain. He had been sent to sea because he was stupid and unmanageable, was very little cared for, and was scarcely regretted when he died abroad two years before, short of twenty. Nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, he had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name. Six months on the Laconia, Captain Frederick Wentworth's frigate, produced the only two letters that were not requests for money. Re-reading them throws Mrs Musgrove into greater grief than she knew when she first heard he was dead. Hearing the name repeated, and hearing them settle that this is probably the same fine young man they met seven or eight years ago, is a new trial for Anne. He is expected, and soon. She must teach herself to be insensible. The Musgroves mean to seek his acquaintance as soon as they hear he has arrived. Their respect is stamped by Dick's badly spelt line, "a fine dashing felow, only two perticular about the schoolmaster." That resolution helps to form the comfort of their evening. Anne is left to teach herself not to hear the name.
