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‘Mr Bennet, I have something to tell you. I’m afraid it’s very provoking news. Would you like to know what it is?’ Mr Bennet lowered his paper and looked over it evenly at his wife. ‘Whatever my wishes in the matter, I am sure you intend to tell me.’ ‘Mary needs spectacles. The oculist says she cannot see without them. There, Mr Bennet!’ She looked about her with the consciousness of having delivered a very significant and troubling piece of information.

It was Elizabeth who spoke first. ‘Surely, Mama, it is good to know what can be done to help Mary. If she needs spectacles, ought she not have them? It must be very hard for her to struggle on without them if she cannot see as well as she should.’

Mrs Bennet uttered a stricken little cry. ‘Really, Lizzy, what can you mean? It is a dreadful misfortune for her! Spectacles are for doddering old men, not for young girls of eighteen! I refuse to believe that she really needs them. No one in my family has ever been so afflicted before. We Gardiners all have perfect sight.’ ‘But, Mama,’ continued Elizabeth, ‘you do so little close work and read so rarely that you may not know whether you need them or not.’

‘How can you say such a thing! No one enjoys a book more than I do. “Read so rarely”, indeed!’ ‘You are forgetting, my dear, that I myself wear glasses,’ added Mr Bennet. ‘I should not like to think of myself as an old man, doddering or otherwise, but I admit I should be quite incapable of study without them.’

‘You are teasing me, Mr Bennet, but you know the truth of what I say. A man may wear spectacles, I suppose, even a young man, especially if he is a lawyer or a clergyman or suchlike, and no one will speak ill of him. For a young woman it is quite a different thing. What do you think people will say when they see Mary in them? Who will want to marry her then?’

Mr Bennet looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps one of those very men you have just described will offer for her, a wearer of spectacles himself, boldly indifferent to the scorn of all the neighbourhood. Indeed, it may be the very thing that brings them together.’