The Jane Austen Book Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

let his knee fall carelessly against her leg. She remembered the feel and taste of kissing him. When he wasn’t smiling at her mischievously, he was staring pleadingly. How could the others not notice? She had to say something. The more time passed, the worse things became.
    Sylvia opened her lunch bag to find that her mother had packed two pieces of bread with nothing between them. It was hard to think of new things to pack in a lunch day after day after day. Her mother had cracked under the pressure. Jocelyn had a Hostess cupcake and a hard-boiled egg. She tried to give them to Sylvia, but she wouldn’t take them.
    That evening, on his way home from work, Daniel came to meet the dog. “Hey, little guy,” he said, holding out his fingers for a good chew, but he seemed less enchanted than distracted. “Here’s the thing,” he said to Jocelyn, and then said nothing else for a long time. They were at opposite ends of the couch so the puppy could race over the flowered surface between them. This distance also prevented Daniel from kissing her, which Jocelyn had decided she couldn’t allow until she’d told him everything.
    â€œI hope that dog’s not on the furniture,” Jocelyn’s mother called from upstairs. She respected Jocelyn’s privacy too much to come in, but she often listened.
    â€œThe thing is,” Daniel said.
    He seemed to be trying to tell her something. Jocelyn was not ready for an exchange of secrets. She told him how Mr. Parker had tried to lecture on the class issues in Ibsen’s An Enemy of thePeople but they’d managed to make him talk about the Smothers Brothers instead. She made a long story of it, and the punch line was “Stupid chickens!” When she could think of nothing more to add on that subject she moved on to math class. She only had to keep talking without pause for twenty minutes or so. Daniel would never put his mother, who had enough to deal with, through the worry and trouble of his being late to dinner.
    B edtime had come to the kennels at last. There was still an occasional bark, but it led to nothing, no one took it up. The dogs were dreaming in their houses. We women were deep inside the fog now, floating in the warm, bright porch as if encased in a bubble. Sahara crawled closer to one of the heaters and lay with her head between her paws. We could see the stitching of her spine, rising and falling with her breath. In the cottony peace outside we heard the stream rinsing and spitting. Jocelyn gave us coffee in cups painted with tiny violets.
    â€œI feel,” she said, passing among us with the cream, but not stopping at Sylvia since she knew how Sylvia liked her coffee, and had already fixed it that way, “I feel Austen working hard to persuade us that Frank Churchill’s behavior is less repulsive than it is. Too many good people in the book would be hurt if he were felt to be as bad as her usual handsome, charming villain. The Westons would be hurt. Jane Fairfax.”
    â€œHe’s neither a good man like Knightley nor a bad one like Elton,” Bernadette said. When she nodded, her glasses slipped ever so slightly down her nose. We couldn’t see this; we knew only because she pushed them back. “He’s complicated. I like that about him. He should come to see Mrs. Weston immediately and he doesn’t, but he’s attentive and thoughtful when he does. He shouldn’t encourage Emma into speculations about Jane thatwill embarrass her later, but he doesn’t hold them against her. He shouldn’t flirt so with Emma, but he knows somehow that she is safe from him. He needs the subterfuge, and he can see that Emma won’t misunderstand it.”
    â€œThat’s just what he can’t know!” Jocelyn’s anguished tone made Sahara get up and come to her, tail wagging tentatively. “That’s just exactly what people are always misunderstanding,” she added, with