Rosings Parsonage: Anne and Catherine

While the Darcy girls and the rest were preparing for the trip to London, two sisters were sitting in a drawing room miles away at the Rosings Park Parsonage in  Hunsford. The room was silent, except for the sounds of a pen scratching on paper, and the pages of a book being turned.
Eventually, one of the young ladies,who appeared to be about 20, with dark brown hair and dark blue eyes, broke the silence.

"Catherine, I do wish you would lay down that book and take a walk with me", she said to a young girl sitting in a chair, apparently buried in a book entitled, "The Sermons of Montelluiney".

The girl, who looked about 15, slowly closed the book, and placed it on the table. In her usual careless way, she placed it too near the edge and it fell with a bang on the wood floor. A cat near the hearth gave a startled jump.

"I would take a walk with you, Anne, but father says improvement of the mind is much more important than wandering about the grounds", she said, as looked into her sister's face with her large black eyes and  placid expression. She smoothed back her black hair from her forehead and rearranged her rumpled dress.

"Yes, dear, but mother says that exercise of the body is as important as exercise of the mind, and I know very well you cannot have one without the other. So don your bonnet and come along", replied Anne.

The two young ladies were soon sauntering about the lawn. They were quiet young ladies, and by society's standards, were not particularly interesting.
Anne spent most of her time assisting her mother,Charlotte Lucas Collins, and attending to domestic affairs. She was very much like her mother, and was a great likeness to her, though her plain features had a prettiness that her mother's did not.
Catherine was usually engrossed in a book, though not of the usual kind for a girl of her age. She read sermons, theological essays, and whatever else her clergyman father, William Collins, put into her hands. Though not as reserved as her sister, she was absent minded, like her father, and was not very intelligent.

The girls were very much loved and disciplined by their parents, and were treated to society at church and Rosings Park, whenever the Honorable Lady Catherine de Bourgh (whom Catherine herself was named after) invited them to dine or spend an evening. Lady Catherine de Bourgh was a very old lady now, so the only amusement to be found there was listening to her speak about her past and her nephew Fitzwilliam Darcy and his family, consisting of his sister Georgianna, wife Elizabeth Bennet Darcy (who had been their mother's close friend), and his two daughters.
Anne always found interest in hearing about this wealthy family, whom her father claimed cousin-ship to, through the wife, Elizabeth, and Catherine delighted in speaking of her connection to Lady Catherine de Bourgh and the Darcy's to everyone she met.The Collins family were to attend Rosings Park that evening, and the sisters hardly knew what awaited them there.