our, made her sit down with us. She did it with
that easiness which is peculiar to women of sense; and to keep up
the good humour she had brought in with her, turned her raillery
upon me. 'Mr. Bickerstaff, you remember you followed me one night
from the playhouse; suppose you should carry me thither to-morrow
night, and lead me in the front box.' This put us into a long field
of discourse about the beauties who were the mothers to the present,
and shined in the boxes twenty years ago. I told her, 'I was glad
she had transferred so many of her charms, and I did not question
but her eldest daughter was within half a year of being a toast.'

"We were pleasing ourselves with this fantastical preferment of the
young lady, when, on a sudden, we were alarmed with the noise of a
drum, and immediately entered my little godson to give me a point of
war. His mother, between laughing and chiding, would have put him
out of the room; but I would not part with him so. I found, upon
conversation with him, though he was a little noisy in his mirth,
that the child had excellent parts, and was a great master of all
the learning on the other side of eight years old. I perceived him a
very great historian in _Aesop's Fables_; but he frankly declared to
me his mind, 'that he did not delight in that learning, because he
did not believe they were true;' for which reason I found he had
very much turned his studies, for about a twelvemonth past, into the
lives of Don Bellianis of Greece, Guy of Warwick, the _Seven
Champions_, and other historians of that age. I could not but
observe the satisfaction the father took in the forwardness of his
son, and that these diversions might turn to some profit. I found
the boy had made remarks which might be of service to him during the
course of his whole life. He would tell you the mismanagement of
John Hickerthrift, find fault with the passionate temper in Bevis of
Southampton, and loved St. George for being the champion of England;
and by this means had his thoughts insensibly moulded into the
notions of discretion, virtue, and honour. I was extolling his
accomplishments, when his mother told me, 'that the little girl who
led me in this morning was, in her way, a better scholar than he.
Betty,' said she, 'd