Every gate, every paling, every shelf in the closet: Mr. Collins has been waiting for this. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 28 of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, in which Elizabeth arrives at the parsonage to see with her own eyes exactly what her friend Charlotte purchased with her marriage.

Mr. Collins receives the travellers with triumphant formality and shows off the house, the garden, and every view in it, pointing out beauties with a minuteness that leaves them far behind. Elizabeth watches for signs of regret in Charlotte and finds instead a well-run home and a wife who has learned precisely when not to hear her husband. Gardening, Charlotte notes, is one of his most respectable pleasures, and she encourages it as much as possible.

• Mr. Collins’s welcome doubles as a guided inventory, fields and trees counted, and Elizabeth suspects every item is addressed particularly to her, as if to show her what she refused.
• Charlotte’s system reveals itself in small ways: rooms arranged so her husband keeps to his book-room, and his absurdities managed with a composure Elizabeth has to admire.
• The house falls into commotion when Miss de Bourgh stops her phaeton at the garden gate; Elizabeth, expecting grandeur, finds her sickly and cross, and privately approves the match with Mr. Darcy on those grounds.
• The visit ends with the summons that thrills Mr. Collins beyond expression: the whole party is invited to dine at Rosings, and he can talk of nothing else.