“Useful?” she said interrogatively.
Fanny had no mind to explain that she thought herself rather good at describing people of the Barlowe type, and was ready to submit herself to more experience of them in case she might be encouraged to write another novel. But she knew that she would have some difficulty in explaining this to her stepmother, who herself was an excellent type.
“Useful—perhaps I should rather have said ‘instructive,’” she replied, after a little pause.
“Instructive, yes; I am glad that you look at our visit so sensibly—I knew you would do so. Yes, you should learn much of the excellence of these people even in the short time that we shall be with them. And it is well that you should remember, my dear Fanny, that you are now quite old enough to have a house of your own to look after.”
It was now Fanny’s turn to seem puzzled.
“I do not quite see how—I mean why—why—that is, the connection—is there any connection between—?”
“What I mean to say is that if at some time a suitor for your hand should appear, belonging to a respectable mercantile family, you will know, without the need of any telling, that your chances of happiness with such a man are far greater than they would be were you to wed someone whose means of getting a living were solely the practice of some of the arts, as they are called—music or painting or the rest.”
“I do not doubt that, mamma,” said Fanny demurely. She was beginning to think that her stepmother was a far better type than she had fancied.
And her stepmother was beginning to think that she had never given Fanny credit for all the good sense she possessed.
The six o’clock tea-party in the Poultry was a function that Fanny Burney’s quick pen only could describe as it deserved to be described. All the time that it was proceeding her fingers were itching to start on it. She could see Mr. Crisp smiling in that appreciative way that he had, as he read her smart sentences, every one of them with its little acid flavour, that remained on the palate of his memory. She was an artist in character drawing, and she was one of the first to perceive how excellent was the material for artistic treatment that might be found in the house of the English tradesman—the superior tradesman who aspired to be called a merchant. She neglected no opportunity of observing such houses; it was only when she was daily consorting with people of the highest rank that she became alarmed lest her descriptions should be accepted as proof that she was in the habit of meeting on terms of intimacy the types of English bourgeois which she had drawn.