Yet the shyest children will now and then forget their shyness. This seems to be the moral of a story which the worthy doctor goes on to tell in his rather prolix and pompous style. “There lived next door to me, at that time, in Poland Street, and in a private house, a capital hair-merchant, who furnished perukes to the judges and gentlemen of the law. The hair-merchant’s female children and mine used to play together in the little garden behind the house; and, unfortunately, one day, the door of the wig-magazine being left open, they each of them put on one of those dignified ornaments of the head, and danced and jumped about in a thousand antics, laughing till they screamed at their own ridiculous figures. Unfortunately, in their vagaries, one of the flaxen wigs, said by the proprietor to be worth upwards of ten guineas—in those days an enormous price—fell into a tub of water, placed for shrubs in the little garden, and lost all its gorgon buckle,[7] and was declared by the owner to be totally spoilt. He was extremely angry, and chid very severely his own children, when my little daughter, ‘the old lady,’ then ten years of age, advancing to him, as I was informed, with great gravity and composure, sedately said, ‘What signifies talking so much about an accident? The wig is wet, to be sure; and the wig was a good wig, to be sure: but ’tis of no use to speak of it any more, because _what’s done can’t be undone_.’” Meanwhile, little was done on any regular plan for Fanny’s education. She had not been suffered to remain at the school in which she was temporarily placed during her mother’s last illness, nor was she sent to any other. When, after the lapse of two or three years, Burney found himself in a position to put two of his girls to school at Paris, he selected the third, Susanna, rather than Fanny, to accompany the eldest sister, proposing to send Fanny and Charlotte together at a future time. Two reasons were assigned for this arrangement. One was the notion that Susanna, who inherited her father’s consumptive habit, required change of climate more than the second daughter. The other was a fear lest Fanny’s deep reverence for her Roman Catholic grandmother might incline her to adopt the same form of faith, and thus render her perversion easy, if, when so young, she fell within the influence of some enterprising French chaplain. We cannot help suspecting, however, that the true cause of Fanny being passed over on this occasion was an impression that Susanna was a girl of brighter parts, and better fitted to benefit by the teaching of a Paris _pension_.