nant of H.M.S. Thrush, having obtained a
ten days' leave of absence, again went down to see his sister; and Sir
Thomas, as a kind of medicinal project on his niece's understanding,
just to enable her to contrast with her father's shabby dwelling an
abode of wealth and plenty like Mansfield Park, arranged that she should
accompany her brother back to Portsmouth, and spend a little time with
her own family. Within four days from their arrival William had to sail;
and Fanny could not conceal it from herself that the home he had left
her in was, in almost every respect, the very reverse of what she could
have wished. It was the abode of noise, disorder and impropriety. Nobody
was in his right place; nothing was done as it ought to be. She could
not respect her parents as she had hoped. Her father was more negligent
of his family, worse in his habits, coarser in his manners, than she had
been prepared for. He did not want abilities; but he had no curiosity,
and no information beyond his profession. He read only the newspaper and
the Navy List. He talked only of the dockyard, the harbour, Spithead,
and the Motherbank. He swore and he drank; he was dirty and gross.

She had never been able to recall anything approaching to tenderness in
his former treatment of herself. There had remained only a general
impression of roughness, and now he scarcely ever noticed her but to
make her the object of a coarse joke.

Her disappointment in her mother was greater. There she had hoped much,
and found almost nothing. She discovered, indeed, that her mother was a
partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught
nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement
and discomfort from beginning to end, and who had no talent, no
conversation, no affection towards herself; no curiosity to know her
better, no desire of her friendship, and no inclination for her company
that could lessen her sense of such knowledge.

At the end of the fourth week of her visit Harry Crawford came to see
Fanny, made himself very agreeable to her and her family, and then went
back to town to see his sister, and to meet such friends as Edmund
Bertram and the Rushworths. Fanny heard from Mary of Maria's fine house
in Wimpole Street, of the splendours of the first party, and of the
attentions paid to Julia by that would-be amateur actor, the Honourable
John Yates; while from Edmund she gathered that his hopes of securing
Mary w