Nor must you be fancying that the invitation is meant as any particular compliment to _you_; the compliment is intended to your uncle and aunt and me.

Mrs.Grant thinks it a civility due to _us_ to take a little notice of you, or else it would never have come into her head, and you may be very certain that, if your cousin Julia had been at home, you would not have been asked at all." Mrs.Norris had now so ingeniously done away all Mrs.Grant's part of the favour, that Fanny, who found herself expected to speak, could only say that she was very much obliged to her aunt Bertram for sparing her, and that she was endeavouring to put her aunt's evening work in such a state as to prevent her being missed.
"Oh! depend upon it, your aunt can do very well without you, or you would not be allowed to go.

_I_ shall be here, so you may be quite easy about your aunt.

And I hope you will have a very _agreeable_ day, and find it all mighty _delightful_.

But I must observe that five is the very awkwardest of all possible numbers to sit down to table; and I cannot but be surprised that such an _elegant_ lady as Mrs.Grant should not contrive better! And round their enormous great wide table, too, which fills up the room so dreadfully! Had the doctor been contented to take my dining-table when I came away, as anybody in their senses would have done, instead of having that absurd new one of his own, which is wider, literally wider than the dinner-table here, how infinitely better it would have been! and how much more he would have been respected! for people are never respected when they step out of their proper sphere.
Remember that, Fanny.