Elinor reflected to herself that they were really kind people, as she went out again into the grey afternoon where everything was getting up for rain. She made up her mind she would just have time to run into the Hills’, at the Hurst, and leave her message, and so get home before the storm began. The clouds lay low like a dark grey hood over the fir-trees and moorland shaggy tops of the downs all round. There was not a break anywhere in the consistent grey, and the air, always so brisk, had fallen still with that ominous lull that comes over everything before a convulsion of nature. Some birds were still hurrying home into the depths of the copses with a frightened straightness of flight, as if they were afraid they would not get back in time, and all the insects that are so gay with their humming and booming had disappeared under leaves and stones and grasses. Elinor saw a bee burrowing deep in the waxen trumpet of a foxglove, as if taking shelter, as she walked quickly past. The Hills--there were two middle-aged sisters of them, with an old mother, too old for such diversion as the inspection of wedding-clothes, in the background--would scarcely let Elinor go out again after they had accepted her invitation with rapture. “I was just wondering where I should see the new fashions,” said Miss Hill, “for though we are not going to be married we must begin to think about our winter things----” “And this will be such an opportunity,” said Miss Susan, “and so good of you to come yourself to ask us.” “What has she come to ask you to,” said old Mrs. Hill; “the wedding? I told you girls, I was sure you would not be left out. Why, I knew her mother before she was married. I have known them all, man and boy, for nearer sixty than fifty years--before her mother was born! To have left you out would have been ridiculous. Yes, yes, Elinor, my dear; tell your mother they will come--delighted! They have been thinking for the last fortnight what bonnets they would wear----” “Oh, mother!” and “Oh, Elinor!” said the “girls,” “you must not mind what mother says. We know very well that you must have worlds of people to ask. Don’t think, among all your new connections, of such little country mice as us. We shall always just take the same interest in you, dear child, whether you find you can ask us or not.” “But of course you are asked,” said Elinor, in _gaieté de cœur_, not reflecting that her mother had begun to be in despair about the number of people who could be entertained in the cottage dining-room, “and you must not talk about my new grand connections, for nobody will ever be like my old friends.”