I'm curious about what we would find by tracking the word "too" across the entire Mansfield short story corpus, mainly with word counts, word collocations, and n-grams. My hypothesis would be that the word "too" appears most frequently (perhaps exclusively) in stories with thematics of excess, both material and immaterial.

This interlude slows the narrative down with sensory details that evoke unease and gloom: from the icy air, to the skeleton-like trees, to the clustered houses, to the trudging passengers, the reader cannot help but anxiously anticipate the events and conversations that will follow. We can broaden our exploration of how the story creates this mood by tracing the words "cold," "pale," and "dark" with word counts, concordances, and dispersion plots.

Ezra Jennings is very conscious about what he can and cannot disclose to other characters (and, consequently, to readers of the text). When and why do characters withhold information throughouth The Moonstone? And how does delayed information shape the pacing of the narrative? A comparative word count of chapters and larger sections that involve deferred information can help us to determine whether the act of withholding knowledge extends or curtails narration.