'O, all the better, Major. If you understand your own interest you will be as eager to break up your quarters, as I can be to see your successors march into them. I have now heard all your compliments, and you have heard all my repartees; both sides, therefore, want new auditors. A great many things I have said to you will do vastly well again for a new corps; and, to do you justice, some few things you have said yourselves may do again in a new county.' Then, addressing Camilla, she proposed, though without moving, that they should converse with one another, and leave the men to take care of themselves. 'And excessively they will be obliged to me,' she continued, without lowering her voice, 'for giving this little holiday to their poor brains; for, I assure you, they have not known what to say this half hour. Indeed, since the first fortnight they were quartered here, they have not, upon an average, said above one new thing in three days. But one's obliged to take up with Officers in the country, because there's almost nothing else. Can you recommend me any agreeable new people?' 'O no, ma'am! I have hardly any acquaintance, except immediately round the rectory; but, fortunately, my own family is so large, that I have never been distressed for society.' 'O, ay, true! your own family, begin with that; do, pray, give me a little history of your own family?' 'I have no history, ma'am, to give, for my father's retired life----' 'O, I have seen your father, and I have heard him preach, and I like him very much. There's something in him there's no turning into ridicule.' Camilla, though surprised, was delighted by such a testimony to the respectability of her father; and, with more courage, said--'And, I am sure, if you knew my mother, you would allow her the same exemption.' 'So I hear; therefore, we won't talk of them. It's a delightful thing to think of perfection; but it's vastly more amusing to talk of errors and absurdities. To begin with your eldest sister, then--but no; she seems in just the same predicament as your father and mother: so we'll let her rest, too.' 'Indeed she is; she is as faultless----' 'O, not a word more then; she won't do for me at all. But, pray, is there not a single soul in all the round of your large family, that can afford a body a little innocent diversion?' 'Ah, madam,' said Camilla, shaking her head; 'I fear, on the contrary, if they came under your examination, there is not one in whom you would not discern some foible!' 'I should not like them at all the worse for that; for, between ourselves, my dear Miss Tyrold, I am half afraid they might find a foible or two in return in me; so you must not be angry if I beg the favour of you to indulge me with a few of their defects.' 'Indulge you!'