When Elizabeth, Jane, and Maria reach the inn where Mr. Bennet’s coach is meeting them, Lydia and Kitty are there. Lydia has ordered a table of food and says she wants to treat them, but they have to lend her the money because she spent hers on a hat across the street. The hat is ugly, she says, but “I thought I might as well buy it as not” (205). She adds that it won’t matter what they look like now that the soldiers are leaving Meryton; Elizabeth expresses surprise at this news. Lydia says they are going to Brighton and that she wants her father to take them all. Their mother is in favor of the idea.

As they sit down to lunch, Lydia informs them that “Wickham is safe” from Mary King, “a nasty little freckled thing,” for she is going to stay with her uncle in Liverpool (206). Elizabeth thinks Mary King is now safe from Wickham and wonders at the fact that she used to be interested in him.

Lydia monopolizes the conversation on the ride home. She asks what Jane and Elizabeth did while they were away and launches into a long speech about how she hopes they met “pleasant men.