Page:Traits and Trials.pdf/239

Rh Here was indeed a treasure of delight and information. Fanny, who, like all active minds, had still many hours of the day unemployed, found here an invaluable and constant resource. She had often secretly regretted how all the advantages of her earlier education were being thrown away, but here was an opportunity for the cultivation of her mental powers. Without suffering her new found enjoyment to interfere with her more active duties, she read a great deal, and one book, with a passion of hope and pleasure: it was the Abbé Siéye's work on the instruction of the deaf and dumb. It opened a field of expectation, on which she had before scarcely allowed herself to think. A little practice soon brought experience to her aid, and in a few months she was astonished at her sister's progress.

Edith had a natural talent for drawing, and it was extraordinary how much this facilitated her progress: gradually she learnt to read; then to write, and she acquired an extraordinary facility