The Bennet girls’ prospects come with fine print: Longbourn is entailed away to a distant cousin, and their mother never forgets it. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 7 of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, in which a militia regiment settles into Meryton for the winter and a dinner invitation becomes a campaign of Mrs. Bennet’s own devising.

Kitty and Lydia now walk to Meryton daily to collect news of officers, prompting their father to observe that they must be two of the silliest girls in the country. Then a note arrives from Netherfield: the ladies invite Jane to dine while the gentlemen eat with the officers. Jane asks for the carriage, and her mother, consulting the sky, has a better idea.

• The entail gets its first mention: the estate is settled on a relation the girls have never met, and on this subject Mrs. Bennet is beyond the reach of reason.
• Sent on horseback because it seems likely to rain, Jane is caught in a downpour exactly as her mother planned, and the resulting cold confines her to Netherfield for days.
• Mrs. Bennet is perfectly satisfied with the outcome, and her husband asks whether she will find comfort, should Jane die of it, in knowing it was all in pursuit of Mr. Bingley and under her orders.
• Elizabeth walks the three miles to Netherfield alone, jumping stiles and springing over puddles, and arrives with weary ankles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with exercise. She finds Jane feverish and is invited to stay on as her nurse.