‘Ha!’cried William,‘that's just where I should have put her myself.It's the best berth at Spithead.But here is my sister,Sir,here is Fanny,’turning and leading her forward;-‘it is so dark you do not see her.’
With an acknowledgement that he had quite forgot her,Mr Price now received his daughter;and,having given her a cordial hug,and observed that she was grown into a woman,and he supposed would be wanting a husband soon,seemed very much inclined to forget her again.
Fanny shrunk back to her seat,with feelings sadly pained by his language and his smell of spirits;and he talked on only to his son,and only of the Thrush,though William,warmly interested,as he was,in that subject,more than once tried to make his father think of Fanny,and her long absence and long journey.
After sitting some time longer,a candle was obtained;but,as there was still no appearance of tea,nor,from Betsey's reports from the kitchen,much hope of any under a considerable period,William determined to go and change his dress,and make the necessary preparations for his removal on board directly,that he might have his tea in comfort afterwards.
As he left the room,two rosy-faced boys,ragged and dirty,about eight and nine years old,rushed into it just released from school,and coming eagerly to see their sister,and tell that the Thrush was gone out of harbour;Tom and Charles:Charles had been born since Fanny's going away,but Tom she had often helped to nurse,and now felt a particular pleasure in seeing again.Both were kissed very tenderly,but Tom she wanted to keep by her,to try to trace the features of the baby she had loved,and talk to him of his infant preference of herself.Tom,however,had no mind for such treatment:he came home,not to stand and be talked to,but to run about and make a noise;and both boys had soon burst away from her,and slammed the parlour door till her temples ached.
She had now seen all that were at home;there remained only two brothers between herself and Susan,one of whom was clerk in a public office in London,and the other midshipman on board an Indiaman.But though she had seen all the members of the family,she had not yet heard all the noise they could make.Another quarter of an hour brought her a great deal more.William was soon calling out from the landing-place of the second storey,for his mother and for Rebecca.He was in distress for something that he had left there,and did not find again.A key was mislaid,Betsey accused of having got at his new hat,and some slight,but essential alteration of his uniform waistcoat,which he had been promised to have done for him,entirely neglected.
Mrs Price,Rebecca,and Betsey,all went up to defend themselves,all talking together,but Rebecca loudest,and the job was to be done,as well as it could,in a great hurry;William trying in vain to send Betsey down again,or keep her from being troublesome where she was;the whole of which,as almost every door in the house was open,could be plainly distinguished in the parlour,except when drowned at intervals by the superior noise of Sam,Tom,and Charles chasing each other up and downstairs,and tumbling about and hallooing.
Fanny was almost stunned.The smallness of the house,and thinness of the walls,brought everything so close to her,that,added to the fatigue of her journey,and all her recent agitation,she hardly knew how to bear it.Within the room all was tranquil enough,for Susan having disappeared with the others,there were soon only her father and herself remaining;and he taking out a newspaper-the accustomary loan of a neighbour,applied himself to studying it,without seeming to recollect her existence.The solitary candle was held between himself and the paper,without any reference to her possible convenience;but she had nothing to do,and was glad to have the light screened from her aching head,as she sat in bewildered,broken,sorrowful contemplation.
She was at home.But alas,it was not such a home,she had not such a welcome,as-she checked herself;she was unreasonable.What right had she to be of importance to her family?She could have none,so long lost sight of!William's concerns must be dearest-they always had been-and he had every right.Yet to have so little said or asked about herself-to have scarcely an enquiry made after Mansfield!It did pain her to have Mansfield forgotten;the friends who had done so much-the dear,dear friends!But here,one subject swallowed up all the rest.Perhaps it must be so.The destination of the Thrush must be now pre-eminently interesting.A day or two might show the difference.She only was to blame.Yet she thought it would not have been so at Mansfield.No,in her uncle's house there would have been a consideration of times and seasons,a regulation of subject,a propriety,an attention towards everybody which there was not here.
The only interruption which thoughts like these received for nearly half an hour,was from a sudden burst of her father's,not at all calculated to compose them.At a more than ordinary pitch of thumping and hallooing in the passage,he exclaimed,‘Devil take those young dogs!How they are singing out!Ay,Sam's voice louder than all the rest!That boy is fit for a boatswain.Holla-you there-Sam-stop your confounded pipe,or I shall be after you.’
This threat was so palpably disregarded,that though within five minutes afterwards the three boys all burst into the room together and sat down,Fanny could not consider it as a proof of anything more than their being for the time thoroughly fagged,which their hot faces and panting breaths seemed to prove-especially as they were still kicking each other's shins,and hallooing out at sudden starts immediately under their father's eye.
