‘There’s a difference between one susceptible of instruction, and anything so flippant and volatile as Bertha,’ said Miss Fennimore, smiling. ‘And poor Maria!’
‘She is so good and kind! If she could only see a few things, and people, and learn to talk!’
‘Silence and unobtrusiveness are the only useful lessons for her, poor girl!’ then observing Phœbe’s bewildered looks, ‘My dear, I was forced to speak to Bertha because she was growing jealous of Maria’s exemptions; but you, who have been constantly shielding and supplying her deficiencies, you do not tell me that you were not aware of them?’
‘I always knew she was not clever,’ said Phœbe, her looks of alarmed surprise puzzling Miss Fennimore, who in all her philosophy had never dreamt of the unconscious instinct of affection.
‘I could not have thought it,’ she said.
‘Thought what? Pray tell me! O what is the matter with poor Maria?’
‘Then, my dear, you really had never perceived that poor Maria is not—has not the usual amount of capacity—that she cannot be treated as otherwise than deficient.’
‘Does mamma know it?’ faintly asked Phœbe, tears slowly filling her eyes.
Miss Fennimore paused, inwardly rating Mrs. Fulmort’s powers little above those of her daughter. ‘I am not sure,’ she said; ‘your sister Juliana certainly does, and in spite of the present pain, I believe it best that your eyes should be opened.’
‘That I may take care of her.’