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continuously since my aunt Philips’s card party, and the lanes, as Lizzy would say, are quite impassable for mud. The garden is become a swamp and may yet turn into a lake. Ducks have taken up residence on the lawn and yesterday Hill found a frog in the scullery. The trees have lost the last of their leaves, and the views from the windows are all grey skies and brown mud. It is the most dismal thing you ever saw, and yet here at Longbourn we are not at all despondent – far from it. We are tremendously cheerful.
    A few days ago, Mr. Bingley and the Conceited Caroline braved the weather and the treacherous lanes to invite us all in person to the ball at Netherfield, but it was plain to anyone with half a brain he couldn’t care a fig if none of us went except Jane. He gazed at her with big calf eyes for the entire visit, and she gazed back all pink and moony. They are perfectly adorable, their children will be perfectly adorable, their whole life together will be one happy bundle of perfect adorableness. I keep hugging her, and she keeps telling me not to be silly, butI can’t help it. Love has made her more beautiful than ever – as if she has swallowed the sun. She is netting a new overskirt for the ball, but I don’t suppose it will ever be ready, because every time she picks it up she puts it down again, sighs, and stares out of the window with a dreamy adorable smile.
    That is the first reason we are so cheerful, and it is marvellous. The second is that Mr. Collins – Mr. Collins! – is pursuing Lizzy. Mamma is delighted. She says it is his way of making up for inheriting Longbourn, and it is the funniest thing in the world to watch them. He is all compliments and pleasantries. She cuts him whenever she can, and hides whenever she sees him coming. Yesterday afternoon, she braved the pouring rain and ran all the way to the farm to escape him, but even then there was no respite. “She is probably in the dairy,” I told Mr. Collins when he enquired, and I nearly died as we watched him wade through mud and streaming manure to join her. She hid behind a bale of hay, and he got filthy dirty for nothing. He bored us to death all evening trying to save face by telling us how fascinated he is by cows, and Lizzy is still not speaking to me, but it was worth it.
    I know exactly what I will be wearing to the ball. It is an old gown of Jane’s, let down at the hem and out at the bust, but the prettiest white spotted muslin, with an embroidered bodice and sleeves like little puffed clouds. I shall wear white silk flowers in my hair, my jade earrings, and new dancing slippers after the last pair got ruined at the assembly ball. I shan’t be as smart as Bingley’s sisters or their friends, but I am sure I am an absolute decade younger than most of them. And anyway, I don’t care about them. I don’t even care about the officers – except for one . . . Maria Lucas has learned all the new dancesfrom her London cousin, and is teaching them to us. Kitty and I practise all the time. I already have blisters on my feet, but I don’t care. Mr. Collins has engaged Lizzy for the first two dances (she couldn’t say no, after the cowshed) and has warned that he plans to monopolise her for the entire ball.
    I am quite glad for once that I am the youngest and Mamma does not want me to marry Mr. Collins. It is so very difficult to resist Mamma when her mind is made up (like poor Jane riding to Netherfield in the rain), and marrying Mr. Collins must be one of the most disgusting things anyone could do. Poor Lizzy! I do feel sorry for her, but . . . and I know this isn’t sisterly or kind or good . . . but with Mr. Collins pursuing her , Wickham will be mine all evening.

Wednesday, 27th November
    I t is four o’clock in the morning. Kitty is snoring away beside me but I can’t sleep. The ball – oh, the ball!
    Wickham was not there. I have to write