As the latter’s age increased, her passion for writing became more confirmed. Every scrap of white paper that could be seized upon without question or notice was at once covered with her manuscript. She was not long in finding out that her turn was mainly for story-telling and humorous description. The two girls laughed and cried together over the creations of the elder’s fancy, but the native timidity of the young author, and still more, perhaps, her father’s low estimate of her capacity, made her apprehend nothing but ridicule if what she scribbled were disclosed to others. She worked then under the rose, imposing the strictest silence on her faithful accomplice. When in London, she plied her pen in a closet up two pair of stairs, that was appropriated to the younger children as a playroom. At Lynn, she would shut herself up to write in a summer-house, which went by the name of ‘The Cabin.’ Yet all her simple precautions could not long elude the suspicion of her sharp-sighted stepmother. The second Mrs. Burney was a bustling, sociable person, who did not approve of young ladies creeping out of sight to study; though herself fond of books, and, as we learn, a particular admirer of Sterne’s ‘Sentimental Journey,’ then recently published, she was a matron of the period, and could not tolerate the idea of a young woman under her control venturing on the disesteemed career of literature. The culprit, therefore, was seriously and frequently admonished to check her scribbling propensity. Some morsels of her compositions, falling into the hands of Mrs. Burney, appear to have added point to the censor’s remarks. Fanny was warned not to waste time and thought over idle inventions; and she was further cautioned, and not unreasonably, according to the prevailing notions of the day, as to the discredit she would incur if she came before the public as a female novelist. The future author of ‘Cecilia’ was only too ready to assent to this view, and to cry _peccavi_. She bowed before her stepmother’s rebukes, and prepared herself inwardly for a great act of sacrifice. Seizing an opportunity when her father was at Chesington, and Mrs. Burney was in Norfolk, ‘she made over to a bonfire, in a paved play-court, her whole stock’ of prose manuscripts.