ke the purchase necessary for the tranquillity of the house.

Her temper was open. She acknowledged her fears, blamed herself for
having contended so warmly; and from that hour Fanny, understanding the
worth of her disposition and perceiving how fully she was inclined to
seek her good opinion and refer to her judgment, began to feel again the
blessing of affection, and to entertain the hope of being useful to a
mind so much in need of help, and so much deserving it. She gave advice,
advice too sound to be resisted by a good understanding, and given so
mildly and considerately as not to irritate an imperfect temper, and she
had the happiness of observing its good effects not unfrequently.
More was not expected by one who, while seeing all the obligation and
expediency of submission and forbearance, saw also with sympathetic
acuteness of feeling all that must be hourly grating to a girl like
Susan. Her greatest wonder on the subject soon became--not that Susan
should have been provoked into disrespect and impatience against her
better knowledge--but that so much better knowledge, so many good
notions should have been hers at all; and that, brought up in the midst
of negligence and error, she should have formed such proper opinions
of what ought to be; she, who had had no cousin Edmund to direct her
thoughts or fix her principles.

The intimacy thus begun between them was a material advantage to
each. By sitting together upstairs, they avoided a great deal of the
disturbance of the house; Fanny had peace, and Susan learned to think it
no misfortune to be quietly employed. They sat without a fire; but
that was a privation familiar even to Fanny, and she suffered the
less because reminded by it of the East room. It was the only point of
resemblance. In space, light, furniture, and prospect, there was
nothing alike in the two apartments; and she often heaved a sigh at the
remembrance of all her books and boxes, and various comforts there. By
degrees the girls came to spend the chief of the morning upstairs, at
first only in working and talking, but after a few days, the remembrance
of the said books grew so potent and stimulative that Fanny found it
impossible not to try for books again. There were none in her father's
house; but wealth is luxurious and daring, and some of hers found its
way to a circulating library. She became a subscriber; amazed at being
anything _in propria persona_, amazed at her own doings in every way,