About this story
Your sailor brother's amber cross hangs on a plain gold chain from your cousin Edmund. Refusing Henry Crawford sends you back to Queen Street, where a dead sister's silver knife makes you the court of the household, until a supper-time newspaper paragraph reports Maria's elopement and breaks the great house open. Forty-eight chapters carry the poor relation from a stranger on the stairs to Mansfield's parsonage.
How it opens
Rain pressed smoke from the Portsmouth roofs while another bill waited unopened.
Mrs PriceYour aunt Norris writes as if ten children were an error in arithmetic.
Mrs PriceThis table holds more bills than supper, and neither will grow smaller tonight.
Mr PriceIf the Bertrams mean to help, let them help without a sermon attached.
Mrs PriceI dislike their charity, but I dislike seeing you hungry more.
Choose
Do they ask for me by name?
Would I ever be permitted to return?