These shared her heart:
her time was given chiefly to her house and her servants.
Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; all was busy
without getting on, always behindhand and lamenting it,
without altering her ways; wishing to be an economist,
without contrivance or regularity; dissatisfied with
her servants, without skill to make them better,
and whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging them,
without any power of engaging their respect.
Of her two sisters, Mrs. Price very much more resembled Lady
Bertram than Mrs. Norris. She was a manager by necessity,
without any of Mrs. Norris's inclination for it, or any
of her activity. Her disposition was naturally easy
and indolent, like Lady Bertram's; and a situation of similar
affluence and do-nothingness would have been much more
suited to her capacity than the exertions and self-denials
of the one which her imprudent marriage had placed her in.
She might have made just as good a woman of consequence
as Lady Bertram, but Mrs. Norris would have been a more
respectable mother of nine children on a small income.
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