"How much your friends in Ireland must be enjoying your pleasure
on this occasion, Miss Fairfax. I dare say they often think of you,
and wonder which will be the day, the precise day of the instrument's
coming to hand. Do you imagine Colonel Campbell knows the business
to be going forward just at this time?--Do you imagine it to be
the consequence of an immediate commission from him, or that he may
have sent only a general direction, an order indefinite as to time,
to depend upon contingencies and conveniences?"

He paused. She could not but hear; she could not avoid answering,

"Till I have a letter from Colonel Campbell," said she, in a voice
of forced calmness, "I can imagine nothing with any confidence.
It must be all conjecture."

"Conjecture--aye, sometimes one conjectures right, and sometimes
one conjectures wrong. I wish I could conjecture how soon I shall
make this rivet quite firm. What nonsense one talks, Miss Woodhouse,
when hard at work, if one talks at all;--your real workmen,
I suppose, hold their tongues; but we gentlemen labourers if we get
hold of a word--Miss Fairfax said something about conjecturing.
There, it is done. I have the pleasure, madam, (to Mrs. Bates,)
of restoring your spectacles, healed for the present."

He was very warmly thanked both by mother and daughter; to escape
a little from the latter, he went to the pianoforte, and begged
Miss Fairfax, who was still sitting at it, to play something more.

"If you are very kind," said he, "it will be one of the waltzes