or an hour or two every morning . . . no human being ever took
the trouble to inquire where else we spent the rest of the day between
our meals. Thus, whether we gossiped in one turret or another, whether
we lounged about the garden, or out of the window above the gateway, no
one so much as said "Where have you been, mademoiselle?"'

After reading this we are no longer surprised to be told that Cassandra
and Jane, together with their cousin, Jane Cooper, were allowed to
accept an invitation to dine at an inn with their respective brothers,
Edward Austen and Edward Cooper, and some of their young friends.

School life does not appear to have left any very deep impression on
Jane Austen.[21] Probably she went at too youthful an age, and her stay
was too short. At any rate, none of the heroines of her novels, except
Anne Elliot,[22] are sent to school, though it is likely enough, as
several writers have pointed out, that her Reading experiences suggested
Mrs. Goddard's school in _Emma_.

Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a school--not of
a seminary, or an establishment, or anything which
professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense,
to combine liberal acquirements with elegant
morality upon new principles and new systems--and
where young ladies for enormous pay might be
screwed out of health and into vanity, but a real,
honest, old-fashioned boarding-school, where a
reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold
at a reasonable price, and where girls might be
sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves
into a little education, without any danger of
coming back prodigies. Mrs. Goddard's school was
in high repute. . . . She had an ample house and
garden, gave the children plenty of wholesome
food, let them run about a great deal in the
summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains
with her own hands. It was no wonder that a train
of twenty young couples now walked after her to
church. She was a plain, motherly kind of woman.

Jane herself finished her schooling at the early age of nine. The rest
of her education was completed at home. Probably her father taught her
in his leisure hours, and James, when he was at home, gave her many
useful hints. Father, mother, and eldest brother were all fully capable
of help