Abbeychurch,' said
Anne, 'but I am sure the people whom we see oftenest at home, are such
as I think it a privilege to know.' And she began to enumerate these
friends.

'Oh! Anne,' interrupted Elizabeth, 'do not, for pity's sake, make me
discontented; here am I in Abbeychurch, and must make the best of it. I
must be as polite and hypocritical as I can make myself. I must waste
my time and endure dullness.'

'As to waste of time,' said Anne, 'perhaps it is most usefully employed
in what is so irksome as you find being in company. Mamma has always
wished me to remember, that acquiring knowledge may after all be but a
selfish gratification, and many things ought to be attended to first.'

'That doctrine would not do for everybody,' said Elizabeth.

'No,' said Anne, 'but it does for us; and you will see it plainer, if
you remember on what authority it is said that all knowledge is
profitable for nothing without charity.'

'Charity, yes,' said Elizabeth; 'but Christian love is a very different
thing from drawing-room civility.'

'Not very different from bearing and forbearing, as Helen said,'
answered Anne.

'Politeness is not great enough,' said Elizabeth, 'to belong to
charity.'

'You are not the person to say so,' said Anne.

'Because I dislike it so much,' said Elizabeth, 'but that is because I
despise it. It is such folly to sit a whole evening with your hands
before you doing nothing.'

'But do you not think,' said Anne, 'that enduring restraint, and
listening to what is not amusing, for the sake of pleasing others, is
doing something?'

'Passively, not actively,' said Elizabeth; 'but it is not to please
others, it is only that they may think you well bred, or rather that
they may not think about you at all.'

'It is to please our father and mother,' said Anne.

'Yes, and that is the reason it must be done,' said Elizabeth; 'it is
the way of the world, and cannot be helped.'

'Rather say it is the trial which has been ordained for us,' said Anne.

'Well,' said Elizabeth, smiling, 'I know all the time that you have the
best of the argument. It would not be so if it was not good for us.'

'And as it is,' said Anne, 'I believe that there is more enjoyment in
the present order of things, than there would be in any arrangement we
could devise.'

'Oh! doubtless,' said Elizabeth, 'just as the corn ripens better with
all the disasters that seem to befall it, than it would if we had the
command of th