You're right, JA does tend to tell rather than show. The only conversations she quotes directly are where she really wants to make a point, or something really witty is said. Peripheral conversations tend to be paraphrased, and in the absence of any direct quotation from many of the characters, they must be described. She even mocks her own habit of doing this in describing cathering at the beginning of chap 2:

it may be stated, for the reader’s more certain information, lest the following pages should otherwise fail of giving any idea of what her character is meant to be