A mean opinion of her abilities was not confined to them. Fanny could read, work, and write, but she had been taught nothing more. As her cousins found her ignorant of many things with which they had been long familiar, they thought her prodigiously stupid, and for the first two or three weeks were continually bringing some fresh report of it into the drawing-room. “Dear mama, only think, my cousin cannot put the map of Europe together—or my cousin cannot tell the principal rivers in Russia—or, she never heard of Asia Minor or the Great Pyramid of Giza—or she does not know the difference between water-colours and crayons and burial chamber paint!—How strange!—Did you ever hear anything so stupid?”

“My dear,” their considerate aunt would reply, “it is very bad, but you must not expect everybody to be as forward and quick at learning as yourself.”

“But, aunt, she is really so very ignorant!—Do you know, we asked her last night which way she would go to get to Ireland; and she said, she should cross to the Isle of Wight. She thinks of nothing but the Isle of Wight, and she calls it the Island, as if there were no other island in the world. I cannot remember the time when I did not know a great deal that she has not the least notion of yet. How long ago it is, aunt, since we used to repeat the chronological order of the pharaohs of Egypt, with the dates of their accession, order of their Dynasties, and most of the principal events of their reigns!”

“Yes,” added the other; “and of the Roman emperors as low as Severus; besides a great deal of the heathen mythology, and all the metals, semi-metals, planets, and distinguished philosophers. And, yes—Egypt! All of it, from head to toe, Lower and Upper, ancient to the beginning of time, filled with the overflowing fertility of the Nile, with kings and pharaohs and princes and princesses and priests and hieroglyphics and strange gravesites and mummification—”

“Very true indeed, my dears, but you are blessed with wonderful memories, exposed to Egypt on a daily basis, thanks to my dearest sister and her—tendre, and your poor cousin has probably none at all. There is a vast deal of difference in memories, as well as in everything else, and therefore you must make allowance for your cousin, and pity her deficiency. And remember that, if you are ever so forward and clever yourselves, you should always be modest; for, much as you know already, there is a great deal more for you to learn.”

“Yes, I know there is, till I am seventeen. But I must tell you another thing of Fanny, so odd and so stupid and tedious. Do you know, she says she does not want to learn either music or drawing? She says she’d rather decipher hieroglyphics!”