(Food and beverages are always a focus for me.)

Catherine’s first experience with a Bath ball is decidedly unpleasant, there is no one to dance with, no one to talk and when she and Mrs. A go to tea, they are forced to sit at a table where the “gentlemen and ladies at this table look as if they wondered why we came here -- we seem forcing ourselves into their party.” The awkwardness of the situation causes the reader to feel great sympathy for Catherine.

Yet after they received an offer of tea from one of their neighbours and thankfully accepted it, things start to change for Catherine – not to a great degree but there is some “light conversation with the gentleman who offered tea” and she overhears “two gentlemen pronounced her to be a pretty girl.”

It says much for the restorative power of tea.