They were perfectly free from any jealousy of Mansfield.
She was as welcome to wish herself there as to be there.
It was sad to Fanny to lose all the pleasures of spring.
She had not known before what pleasures she _had_ to lose
in passing March and April in a town. She had not known
before how much the beginnings and progress of vegetation
had delighted her. What animation, both of body and mind,
she had derived from watching the advance of that season
which cannot, in spite of its capriciousness, be unlovely,
and seeing its increasing beauties from the earliest
flowers in the warmest divisions of her aunt's garden,
to the opening of leaves of her uncle's plantations,
and the glory of his woods. To be losing such pleasures
was no trifle; to be losing them, because she was in
the midst of closeness and noise, to have confinement,
bad air, bad smells, substituted for liberty,
freshness, fragrance, and verdure, was infinitely worse:
but even these incitements to regret were feeble,
compared with what arose from the conviction of being
missed by her best friends, and the longing to be useful
to those who were wanting her!
Could she have been at home, she might have been of service
to every creature in the house.
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