Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/127

 the question; besides that I really should not have a spare room to give her, for I must keep a spare room for a friend.

Fanny is therefore left at Mansfield Park, much to her own thankfulness, as well as Mrs. Norris's; and her position there as constant companion to her aunt becomes pretty well defined. Lady Bertram cannot do without someone at hand to help and advise her continually. The Miss Bertrams do not care for the society of their mother, who has never interested herself in any of their pursuits; and, therefore, while they enter into all the society of the county under Mrs. Norris's chaperonage, Fanny spends her hours quietly at home, delighted to be unnoticed and of use.

Just as his children are alt grown up, Sir Thomas Bertram is obliged to go to the West Indies to see about some of his property there; a voyage which, of course, entails an absence of several months, and he is sincerely grieved at having to go, but, unfortunately, his absence is rather a relief than otherwise to his children. With all his warm affection for them, he has never been able to win any of their hearts, except, perhaps, Edmund's. The others feel real relief at his departure, all the more as some new acquaintances have lately appeared, with whom they can now be on terms of unrestrained intimacy.

Henry and Mary Crawford are excellent pictures of the brilliant, worldly, amusing, and quasi clever young people, who are such well-known features of London society, but to the Bertrams they are a novelty; and, as Mary Crawford has twenty thousand pounds, and is quite ready to be fallen in love with by Sir Thomas's eldest son, and Julia Bertram is equally