Her descriptions, bright though they were and full of apt metaphors, went for nothing. Her sisters were too full of that wonderful thing which had happened—the great Sir Joshua Reynolds, President of the Royal Academy, the painter of all the most beautiful duchesses that were in the world, to say nothing of beautiful ladies of less exalted rank—this great man, who was so busy conferring immortality upon duchesses that he was compelled to keep in his painting-room on Sundays as well as every other day, and who had never been known to suspend his work except upon the occasion of the death of his dear friend Dr. Goldsmith—this man was actually at that very moment sitting in his arm-chair eagerly reading the words which their sister Fanny had written!
The thought was too wonderful for them. The effect that it had on them was to make them feel that they had two sisters in Fanny, the one a pleasant, homely, hem-stitching girl, who could dance the Nancy Dawson jig for them and take off all the people whom she met and thought worth taking off; the other a grave authoress, capable of writing books that great men forsook the society of other great men to read!
They looked on her now with something of awe in their eyes, and it was this lens of awe which, while magnifying her work as a writer where it came into their focus, made them fail to appreciate her fun, for they saw it, as it were, through the edges of the lens and not through the centre.
She quickly perceived the lack of sympathy of her audience.
“What is the matter with you both to-night?” she cried—they were now upstairs in her room, and she knew that at the same moment Mrs. Burney was giving her husband an account of the party. “What is the matter with you both? Has anything happened when I was away to put you out? Why don't you laugh as usual? I am sure I never told you anything half so funny as this, and I was thinking all the way coming home that it would make you roar, and now you sit gravely looking at me and not taking in half I say. Pray, what is the matter?”
“Nothing is the matter, dear,” said Lottie. “Nothing—only I can't help thinking that Sir Joshua is at this moment sitting eagerly reading the book that you wrote—you, sister Fanny, that no one who comes to us notices particularly. I can hardly bring myself to believe that there is only one Fanny.”
Fanny looked at her strangely for some moments, and then said:
“I do not blame you, dear; for I am myself of the same way of thinking: I cannot realize what the padre told us. I cannot think of myself as the Fanny Burney whose book is keeping Sir Joshua out of his bed. That is why I kept on harping like a fool on the single string of that odious party. I feel that I must keep on talking, lest my poor brain should give way when I sit down to think if I am really Fanny Burney, who was ever happiest sitting unnoticed in a corner when people came to this house, or laughing with you all up here. I cannot think how it would be possible for me to write a book that could be read by such as Sir Joshua.”
“Better think nothing more about it,” said Susy, who fancied she saw a strange look in Fanny's eyes. “What's the good of brooding over the matter? There's nothing strange about Sir Joshua's reading the book: I read it and I told you that it was so lovely everybody would want to read it. Besides, Sir Joshua may only have mentioned it for want of a better excuse to leave the club early; so you may not be so famous after all, Fanny.”
Susy's well-meant attempt to restore her threatened equilibrium was too much for Fanny. But there was a considerable interval before her laughter came. She put an arm about Susy, saying: