
gross. She had never been able to recal anything approaching to tenderness in
his former treatment of herself. There had remained only a general impression of
roughness and loudness; and now he scarcely ever noticed her, but to make her
the object of a coarse joke.
    Her disappointment in her mother was greater; there she had hoped much, and
found almost nothing. Every flattering scheme of being of consequence to her
soon fell to the ground. Mrs. Price was not unkind - but, instead of gaining on
her affection and confidence, and becoming more and more dear, her daughter
never met with greater kindness from her, than on the first day of her arrival.
The instinct of nature was soon satisfied, and Mrs. Price's attachment had no
other source. Her heart and her time were already quite full; she had neither
leisure nor affection to bestow on Fanny. Her daughters never had been much to
her. She was fond of her sons, especially of William, but Betsey was the first
of her girls whom she had ever much regarded. To her she was most injudiciously
indulgent. William was her pride; Betsey, her darling; and John, Richard, Sam,
Tom, and Charles, occupied all the rest of her maternal solicitude, alternately
her worries and her comforts. 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;
always 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.
    Much of all this, Fanny could not but be sensible of. She might scruple to
make use of the words, but she must and did feel
