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and great timidity. 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."

Edmund was uniformly kind himself; and she had nothing
worse to endure on the part of Tom than that sort
of merriment which a young man of seventeen will always
think fair with a child of ten. He was just entering
into life, full of spirits, and with all the liberal
dispositions of an eldest son, who feels born only
for expense and enjoyment. His kindness to his little
cousin was consistent with his situation and rights:
he made her some very pretty presents, and laughed at her.

As her appearance and spirits improved, Sir Thomas and Mrs. Norris
thought with greater satisfaction of their benevolent plan;
and it was pretty soon decided between them that,
though far from clever, she showed a tractable disposition,
and seemed likely to give them little trouble. A mean
opinion of her abilities was not confined to _them_.
Fanny could read, work, and write, but she had been taught
nothing more; and as her cousins found her ignorant
of many things with which they had been long familiar,
they thought her prodigiously stupid, and for the first
two or three weeks were continually bringing some fresh
report of it into the drawing-room. "Dear mama, only think,
my cousin cannot put the map of Europe together--
or my cousin cannot tell the principal rivers in Russia--
or, she never heard of Asia Minor--or she does not know
the difference between water-colours and crayons!--
How strange!--Did you ever hear anything so stupid?"

"My dear," their considerate aunt would reply,
"it is very bad, but you must not expect everybody

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