About this story
You make Mr Cavendish the member, marry Mrs Mortimer to the Archdeacon, and lose the doctor to a snowy round in Grange Lane. The will leaves nothing, and you keep the house on Tuesday teas. Forty chapters carry the borough's manager from her first lamps to Tom's proposal at the night bell.
How it opens
At fifteen, you returned from school rehearsing how an only daughter should console her father.
NancyThe mourning room is ready, miss, though the doctor has kept to his library.
Dr MarjoribanksGrief does not improve by staging it, Lucilla, and neither does digestion.
He accepted one hurried kiss before asking whether your school trunk had remained packed.
Choose
Ask Nancy what duties your mother actually left unfinished.
Tell your father you can begin by presiding quietly at dinner.