Hello and welcome to Storytime for grownups.

I'm Faith Moore, and this season we're reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Each episode, I'll read one chapter from the book,

pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along.

It's like an audiobook with built-in notes.

So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair,

and settle in. It's story time. Welcome back. I'm so happy to be here with you again today. And I hope that everyone had a great weekend. And I think I've said this before, but I really truly am just so grateful for this podcast. I really had no idea what it was going to be like when we started, and I had no idea if anyone would even listen.

And here we all are. I'm getting many, many messages every day from so many people who are

enjoying the show and who are asking questions and checking in.

And I'm just thrilled with what it's becoming. And so, you know, we've, we've hit the,

we've hit and passed the halfway mark of Jane Eyre. So I just wanted to make sure that I said that.

Thank you. Thank you for being here and for making this show what it is and helping it to continue to

grow. So we're going to get started today with chapter 21 of

Jane Eyre with a few notes along the way. Welcome to everyone, people who have found the show

today for the first time and people who've been with us since the beginning and everyone in

between and welcome, of course, to real time for everyone who has caught up and is now listening on Monday with us, as opposed to at some other point.

But don't worry, if you are listening at some other point and we have moved on, that's okay.

You can catch up or you can just follow along at your own pace, and that's fine too.

If this is your very first time finding us and you've never read Jane Eyre

before, it's a good idea to pause this episode and go back to Chapter 1 because we are reading

the book aloud and so we are going to read Chapter 21, which is a lot has happened. So you

would be quite confused if you've never read this book before. So go back and start again at chapter one,

...