He had never knowingly given her pain,
but he now felt that she required more positive kindness;
and with that view endeavoured, in the first place,
to lessen her fears of them all, and gave her especially
a great deal of good advice as to playing with Maria
and Julia, and being as merry as possible.
From this day Fanny grew more comfortable. She felt
that she had a friend, and the kindness of her cousin
Edmund gave her better spirits with everybody else.
The place became less strange, and the people less formidable;
and if there were some amongst them whom she could not
cease to fear, she began at least to know their ways,
and to catch the best manner of conforming to them.
The little rusticities and awkwardnesses which had at
first made grievous inroads on the tranquillity of all,
and not least of herself, necessarily wore away, and she
was no longer materially afraid to appear before her uncle,
nor did her aunt Norris's voice make her start very much.
To her cousins she became occasionally an acceptable companion.
Though unworthy, from inferiority of age and strength,
to be their constant associate, their pleasures and schemes
were sometimes of a nature to make a third very useful,
especially when that third was of an obliging,
yielding temper; and they could not but own, when their
aunt inquired into her faults, or their brother Edmund
urged her claims to their kindness, that "Fanny was
good-natured enough.
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