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might have had lodgings there quite away from the sea—a quarter of a mile off—very comfortable. You should have consulted Perry.”
“But, my dear sir, the difference of the journey;--only consider how great it would have been.—A hundred miles, perhaps, instead of forty.”
“Ah! my dear,” as Perry says, “where health is at stake, nothing else should be considered; and if one is to travel, there is not much to chuse between forty miles and an hundred.—Better not move at all, better stay in London altogether than travel forty miles to get into a worse air. This is just what Perry said. It seemed to him a very ill-judged measure.”
Emma’s attempts to stop her father had been vain: and when he had reached such a point as this, she could not wonder at her brother-in-law’s breaking out.
“Mr. Perry,” said he, in a voice of very strong displeasure, “would do as well to keep his opinion till it is asked for. Why does he make it any business of his, to wonder at what I do?—at my taking my family to one part of the coast or another?—I may be allowed, I hope, the use of my judgment as well as Mr. Perry.— I want his directions no more than his drugs.” He paused—and growing cooler in a moment, added, with only sarcastic dryness, if Mr. Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and five children a distance of an hun-dred and thirty miles with no greater expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty, I should be as willing to prefer Cromer to South End as he could himself.”
“True, true,” cried Mr. Knightly, with most ready interposition—“ very true. That’s a consideration indeed.—But John, as to what I was telling you of my idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the right that it may not cut