Fanny's First Novel

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“Oh, in the matter of sense I am the equal of anyone in the family,” said Fanny, laughing. “That I mean to make my one accomplishment—good sense. That is the precious endowment of the dunce of the clever family—good sense; the one who stands next to the dunce in the lack of accomplishments should be endowed with good nature. Good sense and good nature go hand in hand in plain grey taffeta, not down the primrose paths of life, but along the King's highway of every day, where they run no chance of jostling the simple foot-passengers or exciting the envy of any by the flaunting of feathers in their face. Good sense and good nature are best satisfied when they attract no attention, but pass on to obscurity, smiling at the struggle of others to be accounted persons of importance.”

“Then you have indeed made up your mind to marry Mr. Barlowe?” cried Esther.

Fanny laughed enigmatically.

“Does it not mean rather that I have made up my mind not to marry Mr. Barlowe?” she cried.

Esther looked puzzled: she was puzzled, and that was just what Fanny meant her to be.

But then she looked piqued, as elder sisters do when puzzled by the words or the acts of the younger. What business have younger sisters puzzling their elders? Their doing so suggests pertness when the elders are unmarried, but sheer insubordination when they are married; and Esther was by no means willing at any time to abrogate the privileges of her position as a married woman.

“I protest that I do not understand your meaning, Fanny,” she said, raising her chin in a way that gave her head a dignified poise. There was also a chill dignity in the tone of her voice.

“Dear Hettina, I ask your pardon,” cried Fanny quickly. “I fear that I replied to you with a shameful unreasonableness. But indeed I am not sure that you had reason on your side when you assumed that because I was ready to acknowledge that it would not mean happiness to our dear Signor Rauzzini to marry an insignificant person like myself, I was therefore prepared to throw myself into the arms of Mr. Barlowe.”

“I fancied that—that—but you may have another suitor in your mind whose name you have not mentioned to anyone.”

“Why should it be necessary for me to have a suitor of any kind? Is it not possible to conceive of the existence of a young woman without a row of suitors in the background? I admit that the 'Odyssey' of Homer—you remember how I used to listen to your reading of Mr. Broome's translation to mother—would be shorn of much of its interest but for that background of suitors in one of the last books, but—well, my dear sister, I hold that the alternative song of life to the matrimonial duet is the spinster's solo, and it does not seem to me to be quite devoid of interest.”