More was not expected
by one who, while seeing all the obligation and expediency
of submission and forbearance, saw also with sympathetic
acuteness of feeling all that must be hourly grating
to a girl like Susan. Her greatest wonder on the subject
soon became--not that Susan should have been provoked into
disrespect and impatience against her better knowledge--
but that so much better knowledge, so many good notions
should have been hers at all; and that, brought up in the
midst of negligence and error, she should have formed
such proper opinions of what ought to be; she, who had
had no cousin Edmund to direct her thoughts or fix her principles.
The intimacy thus begun between them was a material
advantage to each. By sitting together upstairs,
they avoided a great deal of the disturbance of the house;
Fanny had peace, and Susan learned to think it no
misfortune to be quietly employed. They sat without
a fire; but that was a privation familiar even to Fanny,
and she suffered the less because reminded by it of
the East room. It was the only point of resemblance.
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