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A hundred a year would make them all perfectly co her consent to this plan

"To be sure," said she, "it is better than parting with fifteen hundred pounds at once But, then, if Mrs Dashwood should live fifteen years we shall be completely taken in"

"Fifteen years! my dear Fanny; her life cannot be worth half that purchase"

"Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty An annuity is a very serious business; it co rid of it You are not aware of what you are doing I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for ed with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by reeable she found it Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing My mother was quite sick of it Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my iven me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world"

"It is certainly an unpleasant thing," replied Mr Dashwood, "to have those kind of yearly drains on one's income One's fortune, as your mother justly says, is NOT one's own To be tied down to the regular payment of such a sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it takes away one's independence"

"Undoubtedly; and after all you have no thanks for it They think themselves secure, you do no ratitude at all If I were you, whatever I did should be done at my own discretion entirely I would not bindyearly It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a hundred, or even fifty pounds froht, my love; it will be better that there should by no annuity in the case; whatever I reater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they would only enlarge their style of living if they felt sure of a larger income, and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end of the year It will certainly be much the best way A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed formy promise to my father"