"The air was sharp at four thirty in the morning, when she started work."
"Over the eastern hills the sky was fading to a transparent indigo."
"Because, she thought, as she fixed the pails to the yoke, ducked into it, and staggered upright, really no one should have to deal with another person’s dirty linen."
"The pails slopped as Sarah stumbled back across the yard."
"Work just lingered and festered and lay in wait, to make you slip up in the morning."
"If Elizabeth had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them."
"There is sheets, and pillowslips, and there is our shifts, too—"
"Sarah huffed a sigh, and plucked at the seam under her arm; she had already sweated through her dress, which she hated."
"Everything was as it always was, and yet everything was different."
"He was a mess of loosened hair. His skin was the colour of tea; his eyes were light hazel and caught the sun."
"He ran smack into me. With a barrowload of dung."
"I think my leg’s going to fall off altogether."
"You don’t need to worry about that any more."
"Mr. B. doesn’t mention where you’ve worked before."
"You will hardly think us worth the trouble of talking to at all, I should say."
"This concerns all of us! I had thought, as a woman, you would understand."
"Mr. Bingley may be married off before my dear daughters can even get a look-in."
"And all of it comes from sugar; I bet they have peppermint plasterwork, and barley-sugar columns, and all their floors are made of polished toffee, and their sofas are all scattered with marchpane cushions."
"If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield," said Mrs. Bennet to her husband, "and all the others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for."
"The pleasure of its acquisition made her breathless."
"The room was dull now, and meaningless, with the young ladies gone from it."
"Somewhere you could just be, and not always be obliged to do."
"Happiness was a possibility for Sarah; she had a fair idea of what she missed."
"Everything seemed clean and clear and fresh."
"The world could be made entirely anew, because someone was kind."
"He would keep his head down, draw no attention to himself."
"Wherever you are in this world, the sky is still above you."
"The old pain was bearable, because it had to be, because it would never be entirely gone."
"A scene of such simple certainty that you would think the world was just like this all over, always had been, and always would be."
"It was considerate—just like Jane—to be ill away from home."
"But she lifted the umbrella a little, and glanced in."
"Her senses, briefly, could not accommodate the image."
"The image pressed itself upon her sight like a die into sealing wax."
"Failure to salute an officer; that's rank insubordination, that is."
"She would be found dead in a ditch in the morning."
"This was innocence as deep and dangerous as a quarry-pit."
"Things were cut adrift, and shifting, and nothing could continue as it had been."
"I am very sensible, madam, of the hardship to my fair cousins."
"One sharp knock would shatter him to fragments."
"I beg your pardon;—one knows exactly what to think."
"It was wonderful to be noticed; it was giddying."
"You have to practise. Don’t suck it in like that."
"I’m going to set up my own tobacco shop one day. Only the very best, oh yes indeed. Only the very finest Virginian tobacco."
"They can’t ever get enough of it, your proper London gentlemen. Men of that calibre, they love their tobacco almost as much as they love their sugar."
"Whatever was done with bad grace was done badly."
"Work, Mrs. Hill knew, might not be a cure for all ailments, but it was a sovereign remedy against the more brooding kinds."
"There was so much to be thankful for: there was pleasure in her work, in the rituals and routines of service, the care and conservation of beautiful things."
"But what about Martha? From Martha’s story don’t we learn that there must be pause, that there must be time to listen and be still, and to learn."
"Nothing less than a dance on Tuesday, could have made such a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, endurable."
"She may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, or, as things currently were, merely the suspicion of a lamb."
"How could they possibly stand it? Her envy puffed up into smoke and was gone on the wind. She turned away. So what if she could not have this? She did not want it. She felt light of heart and almost giddy with the sense of release."
"This was the moment when the world would change."
"You saw it all the time, it not working out fair."
"It was like buying a pig-in-a-poke, marriage was; you just could not know what you were getting."
"Sit and wait until Mr. Bingley shook off his sisters and returned to claim her. That was how things worked for young ladies like Miss Jane Bennet."
"It was a thought, that. Not to attach yourself to a man, but to confront instead the open world."
"If he loved Sarah, then it meant that he was, despite all that he had done, and all that he had failed to do, capable of feeling, and capable of good."
"She was more aware of that than the rocky track beneath her feet, the cold air, or any other thing around her."
"This world was a maze. She’d turn this way and then that, race on a few steps, make her choice; but then she’d find herself turned quite around, and sliding back to the start, back into her place."
"Despite the disappointments of his visit, the day of Mr. Collins’s departure brought a fresh hope to Mrs. Hill’s parched and anxious breast."
"The future was no longer such a terrifying place."
"Nothing was certain, of course—for nothing is certain in this life, except that we must leave it—but..."
"These little attentions were more than worth the effort."
"To have achieved all this simply by agreeing to put up with one particular man until he died."
"I can’t think, any more, what I was doing. I can’t think who I was just then, at that moment. I no longer see how I could have thought it was a good idea, to go and do that, at all."
"Every time Sarah stepped into his thoughts, he would lift her up and set her aside, and return to the happy details of the map."
"All brides are beautiful. It is the one day when any woman is allowed to be so."
"To live so entirely at the mercy of other people’s whims and fancies was, she thought, no way to live at all."
"He had become used to all of this. He had barely noticed it for weeks."
"Words had become overnight just little coins, insignificant and unfreighted, to be exchanged for ribbons, buttons, for an apple or an egg."
"This was a beautiful disaster, and it could not be undone."
"It was a chill day when Mr. Wickham actually ventured into the kitchen, bringing with him a sharp draught and the whiff of tobacco smoke."
"It is not quite the wide world, Sarah, dear, but it is the best that I can do for you for the time being."
"March is a terrible time for the cleaning of boots; worse even than the depths of winter."
"I would not have minded quite so much," she said, "but, two whole weeks."
"It is good to have you back, Sarah. We have missed you here."
"You have no notion at all, then, miss, why he might be looking at you so much?"
"It cannot be for the society, since he sits ten minutes together without opening his lips."
"Believe me, my dear, there is precious little pleasure to be taken in it."
"And it cannot be for the cakes, because they really are nothing very remarkable at all, for all Mr. Collins does go on about them—oh, these laces!"
"One day, her fingers would fly about the keyboard with the facility and delicacy of tiny birds. One day."
"There is nothing like the imminence of parting to make people unduly fond of each other."
"It was his way of coping with society: he had to have these little releases, time with people who were like him, who understood him."
"The very fact of the child made everything that had gone before shift and ripple and settle differently, because it all now led to this, and him."
"Heroism had been prepared for by hours of drilling, of learning the Bess and the bayonet and the workings of the field gun."
"The household continued to expand, girl upon girl, and each more trouble than the last."
"He had never even once, during her time of difficulty, so much as mentioned the possibility of their marrying."
"It was better this way, she’d tell herself, as she let herself out of the library and went back down to the kitchen."
"The locals hid their livestock and their food: it was the only explanation for the empty stockades and shambles and barns and smallholdings."
"It was a shallow kind of stillness, like a breath held."
"Away from Salamanca. Away from where they had been struggling towards all this time."
"The hunger he had felt before was nothing. This was a new creature, and it was stronger, fiercer, tighter than he had ever known: it gnawed at his gut, crazed his teeth, squeezed his temples, made him sharp-eyed, twitchy and quick to anger."
"The thing was—a fresh bit of flesh, insofar as anything in this godforsaken cesspit was fresh, it was stupidly easy to get; these youngsters were all so ready to be duped."
"He didn’t desire those little bags of bones; he couldn’t fathom how anybody could—they fostered in him instead an aching sympathy, and a sharper outrage."
"He understood now the joy of everything that he had been so desperate to shrug off: a warm bed, a cup of milk, the next day unspooling just the same as the day before, and the only pressing need being for a good smooth stone to throw at the thieving crows."
"Fear now was a creature; it slithered around him, covered his face and got in amongst his hair and he could not breathe and he could not think."
"This was true fear now, not just a battle’s fleeting consciousness of mortality. This was a constant hum that built and grew until nothing else could be thought of, not at all."
"He had come through death and out the other side."
"What was left of the infantry, under cover of darkness, crept down towards the shore; the men were ferried out in little boats to the waiting ships."
"He nodded to the ventsman, whose face was lined and lean. His hands looked shaky."