The father and mother were in the old
English style, and the young people in the new. Mr and Mrs Musgrove
were a very good sort of people; friendly and hospitable,
not much educated, and not at all elegant. Their children had
more modern minds and manners. There was a numerous family;
but the only two grown up, excepting Charles, were Henrietta and Louisa,
young ladies of nineteen and twenty, who had brought from school at Exeter
all the usual stock of accomplishments, and were now like thousands
of other young ladies, living to be fashionable, happy, and merry.
Their dress had every advantage, their faces were rather pretty,
their spirits extremely good, their manner unembarrassed and pleasant;
they were of consequence at home, and favourites abroad.
Anne always contemplated them as some of the happiest creatures
of her acquaintance; but still, saved as we all are, by some
comfortable feeling of superiority from wishing for the possibility
of exchange, she would not have given up her own more elegant
and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments; and envied them nothing
but that seemingly perfect good understanding and agreement together,
that good-humoured mutual affection, of which she had known
so little herself with either of her sisters.
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