William was gone: and the home he had left her in was, Fanny could not
conceal it from herself, 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 their right place, nothing was done as it
ought to be. She could not respect her parents as she had hoped. On
her father, her confidence had not been sanguine, but he was more
negligent of his family, his habits were worse, and his manners
coarser, 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 loudness; 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. Every flattering scheme of being of
consequence to her soon fell to the ground. Mrs. Price was not unkind;
but, instead of gaining on her affection and confidence, and becoming
more and more dear, her daughter never met with greater kindness from
her than on the first day of her arrival. The instinct of nature was
soon satisfied, and Mrs. Price's attachment had no other source. Her
heart and her time were already quite full; she had neither leisure nor
affection to bestow on Fanny. Her daughters never had been much to
her. She was fond of her sons, especially of William, but Betsey was
the first of her girls whom she had ever much regarded. To her she was
most injudiciously indulgent. William was her pride; Betsey her
darling; and John, Richard, Sam, Tom, and Charles occupied all the rest
of her maternal solicitude, alternately her worries and her comforts.
These shared her heart: her time was given chiefly to her house and her
servants. Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; all was busy
without getting on, always behindhand and lamenting it, without
altering her ways; wishing to be an economist, without contrivance or
regularity; dissatisfied with her servants, without skill to make them
better, and whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging them,
without any power of engaging their respect.