Mrs. Jennings Decides — Sense and Sensibility

One sign is declared to be the whole story. Mrs. Jennings is a widow with a comfortable jointure and two daughters already well married, so she has nothing left to do but marry everyone else. She is quick to find attachments. Colonel Brandon listened while Marianne sang at the park, and he listened again when the Middletons dined at the cottage, and that is enough. It must be so. He is very much in love with her. It would be an excellent match, for he is rich and she is handsome. The joke pleases Mrs. Jennings either way. At the park she laughs at him. At the cottage she laughs at Marianne. Marianne cannot at first understand it. When she does, she hardly knows whether to laugh at the absurdity or blame the rudeness, because she takes it as a slight on his age and on his lonely state as an old bachelor.

Mrs. Dashwood, who is about forty, and five years older than he is, does not think her daughter's youth has the measure of him. Marianne says he is old enough to be her father, and that if he was ever lively enough to love, he has long outlived it. Thirty-five, she says, has nothing to do with marriage. Elinor answers that thirty-five and seventeen had better not marry each other, but that a woman of twenty-seven need not object to him. Marianne grants that such a woman, if her home were uncomfortable or her fortune small, might hire herself as a nurse for the sake of a wife's safety. That would be a bargain, not a marriage. The waistcoat finishes it for her. He spoke of flannel, and with her a flannel waistcoat always means aches, cramps, and every illness of the old. Elinor says he mentioned a slight rheumatic feel in one shoulder, on a cold damp day. A fever, she adds, Marianne would have liked better.

Then Marianne has an alarm she will not hide. They have been at Barton almost a fortnight, and Edward has not come, so he must be ill. Nothing else could delay him. Mrs. Dashwood had no such expectation. She remembers that he was not quick or pleased when she invited him. Elinor, asked about a new grate for the spare room, said there was no hurry, because the room was not likely to be wanted for some time. Marianne finds all of this strange. Their last goodbye was cold. His farewell made no difference between the sisters. Twice she left them alone, and twice he followed her out. Elinor did not cry as Marianne cried, and she is not restless now. A fortnight's absence has become an illness, and a spare grate has been left unhurried. Will the illness last past the sentence that nobody else is expecting him?