Dancing With Mr. Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House Library by Sarah Waters Page B

but, with the exception of Mr Darcy’s broken arm, essentially undamaged. The chief fireman came over as the survivors were being solicitously wrapped in blankets. Someone had managed the English conjuring trick of hot sweet tea for emergencies.
    The officer surveyed them. ‘You were lucky.’
    Lady Baverstoke turned from surveying a house that had not a window left in it with wobbling lip and welling eye. She said, ‘lucky?’
    ‘If that had hit the house you’d all have been killed. As it was—‘He indicated the crater that had once been a croquet lawn. ‘You’d probably have been all right if it hadn’t been for that rotten old ceiling.’ It was too much for Lady Baverstoke who broke down again. The cast tried to comfort her but the fact remained that her drawing room was ruined and the rest of her house not much better. She was quite inconsolable and perhaps it was a little tactless of Mrs Bennet to declare, after a few more minutes, ‘well, we’ll simply have to move the play to the church hall.’
    The cast gaped. Even Lady Baverstoke was silenced. Then Mr Darcy smiled at Mrs Bennet. ‘Maybe a sling will improve my performance.’
    Mrs Bennet turned on him a face like the rising sun.
    ‘Oh, Ken, how noble of you!’ The smile vanished under a tide of relief. ‘Thank goodness I didn’t have time to bring those chairs over from the church hall.’

    My inspiration: A Jane Austen novel seems the antithesis of violent chaos, although these novels were written between the Terror and Waterloo. They appear to be concerned with a thin veneer of civilised behaviour among an exclusive minority yet they have survived and flourished among readerships very different from the ones for which they were written. Jane Austen has always been associated with the country house but has proved herself well able to survive and flourish in much tougher circumstances.

CLEVERCLOGS
    Hilary Spiers
    Yesterday I read 27,373 words. Not counting rereading the cereal packet. It would have been more but Dad took my torch away last night so I had to kneel on my bed to try to read by the light of the street lamp outside, with my head poking through the curtains. That was hard work, because I had to keep listening out for Mum’s footsteps on the stairs. She’s really sneaky, taking her shoes off at the bottom and creeping up to catch me out. ‘You’ll go blind reading in the dark,’ she says. Which is stupid because all you are doing when you’re reading is using your eyes, just the same as if you were looking where you are going or shopping in the supermarket or enjoying the view. Anyway, I wouldn’t have had to read the cereal packet if Dad hadn’t said at breakfast, ‘It’s rude to read at the table,’ and taken my book away. He’s always doing that.
    The book I’m reading at the moment (or was until Dad took it away from me) is Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Granny lent it to me. Dad flicked through it and said to Mum, ‘Should she be reading this?’ like it was one of those fat books Mum reads on holiday that I’m not allowed to borrow. Mum shrugged and said, ‘It’s a classic,’ so Dad just put it on the counter until I’d finished my muesli. I hate muesli; when I stay over at Gina’s, she has those little packets with all the different cereals in them. Mum says they’re bad for your teeth, but what I had for breakfast had 22g of sugar per 100g, so I don’t think that’s very healthy either.
    I worked out the number of words I’d read by using a formula. My formula is one page equals 350 words. You times the number of pages by 350 to get the total, and then add all the other words you’ve read during the day. You can count adverts and things like menus, but not road signs or shop names that you pass every day, because they’re not new. I read 60 pages of Sense and Sensibility today, so that makes 21,000 words already. Then I added all the words in lessons (in books and on the board) and the hymns in