Sense and Sensibility, Volume the Third, Chapters Two and Three

In which communications are heard from both Misses Steele: nosily from the elder -- now apparently named Anne? -- and triumphantly from the younger; and Colonel Brandon offers Elinor a home and living for Edward, which Mrs. Jennings overhears and Three's Companys into an offer of marriage.



In a hurry, sorry! This was recorded in a commandeered conference room at work, and is being written up at a play rehearsal, so I gotta be quick! Two illustrations:

5:30 - "She put the feather in last night."

9:59 - Listening at the door.

And one note: at 11:09, Miss Steele mentions that she feared that Fanny Dashwood would take back the huswifes she had made the Misses Steele, and so "took care to keep [hers] out of sight." Looking it up, a huswife is an obsolete term for, naturally, "housewife." It seems that the term took somewhat of a turn over the centuries, though, to come to mean "a worthless woman," which is of course where we also get the more familiar word "hussy." Now, why Mrs. Dashwood should take to give the Steeles a pair of such women, and how exactly Miss Steele went about hiding hers in front of Mrs. Dashwood, I don't... what? Oh, the third definition, "A small case containing scissors, thread, needles and other sewing things." Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I prefer my version.

UPDATE: Listener Christy has helpfully researched -- i.e., done the seconds of Googling I couldn't be arsed to do -- and cleared up that the name "Nancy" was originally a diminutive of "Anne, " explaining why the elder Miss Steele is referred to by both names. Thanks, Christy!


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg, and high-res copies of the Thompson illustrations can be found in the British Library's Flickr stream. No reading ahead, though!