Tracy’s Reviews > Jane by the Sea: Jane Austen's Love Story > Status Update

I finally flipped the top lid over, and gasped at the bounty within. It was paper. Good quality paper … some fifteen inches high. Enough for a year. Enough for two years. Stories, letters. A new novel, certainly, by this time next year. No other gift would have pleased me more.

Reverend Blackall’s mind could not comprehend criticism or being laughed at, and thus he interpreted all comments as admiration. He was certain that we listened with gratifying enthrallment as he explained that whenever he had an odd ten or fifteen minutes to fill in his day, he would try to compose a universally applicable flattery that could quickly be recited when a convenient moment arose.

surely I was as deserving of a respite as any soul could be. Well, perhaps deserving is not the right word. But in need of a respite, without question, or I should break down in complete hysteria.

I came to be thankful that my own formal education had been so lacking, else there was a real danger that Mama would have condemned me to seek work as a governess. Thankfully, my French, arithmetic, Latin, and piano were sufficiently inadequate.