I have to laugh at the opening of chapter 5. I can just picture the lawyer flattering his client into getting successfully through the paperwork and then turning the details over to his staff of clerks:

"...could not but influence Sir Walter, who had besides been flattered into his very best and most polished behaviour by Mr. Shepherd's assurances of his being known, by report, to the Admiral, as a model of good breeding."

It seems Mr. Shepherd knows that Sir Walter doesn't engage in the most proper manners around people he considers beneath him and had to coach him.

"Sir Walter, without hesitation, declared the Admiral to be the best-looking sailor he had ever met with, and went so far as to say, that, if his own man might have had the arranging of his hair, he should not be ashamed of being seen with him any where; and the Admiral, with sympathetic cordiality, observed to his wife as they drove back through the Park, "I thought we should soon come to a deal, my dear, in spite of what they told us at Taunton. The Baronet will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems no harm in him": reciprocal compliments, which would have been esteemed about equal."

The above is one of my favorite LOL paragraphs of all of JA's novels. I wonder what was told at Taunton?