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Kitty laughed. Lydia demanded that Mary stop being disagreeable, and Mrs. Bennet told them all to be quiet before turning to Elizabeth.

"Your mother permitted you to read at table, I suppose?" she asked, noticing a book beside Elizabeth's plate.

"Only at luncheon when we were quite alone, Aunt," Elizabeth answered. "I did not mean to be rude."

"Well, here we observe proper habits. Four daughters are quite enough to guide without introducing peculiar foreign customs."

Mr. Bennet folded his newspaper. "Five girls now, my dear. We must not deny ourselves the full extent of our accomplishment."

Mrs. Bennet sighed. "You know perfectly well what I mean."

Elizabeth put the book beneath her chair. Her appetite had vanished, although Jane's hand brushed her sleeve in silent reassurance.

Life at Longbourn acquired a pattern. Jane became Elizabeth's confidante; Mary sometimes joined her in reading, although she tended to correct opinions nobody had expressed; Kitty followed Jane wherever she could; and Lydia followed Kitty when it suited her and otherwise did whatever produced the greatest noise. Elizabeth, whose childhood had been spent chiefly among adults, discovered that companionship with cousins could be both exhausting and wonderfully comforting.

Mrs. Bennet was not invariably unkind. When Elizabeth returned shivering from a winter walk, her aunt ordered her wet shoes taken away and sent a warmed brick for her feet, though she complained throughout that careless girls would ruin their health and the carpets together. Before visitors she ensured Elizabeth was neatly dressed and took some pride in her pretty eyes. Her care could be genuine; the distinction between a daughter and a niece could be just as real.

That distinction became apparent when the girls needed new gowns: Mrs. Bennet measured the cost of Elizabeth’s muslin more anxiously than that of her daughters’ dresses. When visitors praised the young ladies of Longbourn, she named the accomplishments of her four daughters first and remembered her husband’s niece afterward. Elizabeth learned to hear what her aunt did not say as clearly as what she did.

Elizabeth did her best to be grateful. She mended small tears in her stockings and was careful not to ask for sweets. At night, however, she sometimes held the locket and imagined her mother's voice reminding her to sit straight, not from severity but because it had once been a game between them.

One evening in early winter, Jane found Elizabeth beside the bedroom window, staring into the darkness.

"You have not spoken much today," Jane observed.

"I have spoken all afternoon," Elizabeth replied. "Mary insisted upon reading a sermon aloud, and I asked her twice whether the author had ever met a cheerful person."

Jane smiled. "That was not quite what I meant."

Elizabeth ran her thumb across the locket. "Do you think Aunt Fanny wishes I had gone somewhere else?"

Jane sat beside her. "Mama worries about everything. She worried that Lydia would never learn to walk, and when Lydia did learn, she worried that she would never stop."

"That is quite a reasonable worry," Elizabeth conceded.

"She does not always think before she speaks," Jane continued. "But you belong here. Papa says so, and I say so."

"You are very kind."

"I am not being kind. You are my cousin, and I am glad you are here."

Elizabeth considered this. "Even when I correct your German?"

"Especially then. I can now say good morning to someone in Berlin, should I ever find myself there."

"Guten Morgen," Elizabeth offered.

Jane repeated it with a pronunciation that made Elizabeth giggle. Soon they were both laughing beneath the bedclothes, trying not to wake Kitty on the other side of the wall.

Mr. Bennet's library became Elizabeth's other refuge. Its shelves held histories, poetry, travel accounts, and books that had been opened so often their spines had surrendered all dignity. Mr. Bennet permitted her to read almost anything suitable for her age, asking only that she return volumes to their proper places and refrain from using them to settle disputes with Lydia.

"Your father was fond of this," he told her one rainy afternoon, taking down a battered account of voyages in the Mediterranean. "He was twelve when he decided he must see the world. He attempted to build a raft in the pond."

"Did it float?" Elizabeth asked.

"For nearly eleven seconds. His confidence endured considerably longer."

She laughed. Mr. Bennet opened the book to a page marked with Henry's name in a schoolboy hand. Elizabeth traced the letters carefully.