his face, and so
ludicrously that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself
could see there was some likeness in the fantastical malicious caricature.

"Yes," says she, "I solemnly vow, own, and confess, that I want a good
husband. Where's the harm of one? My face is my fortune. Who'll come?--buy,
buy, buy! I cannot toil, neither can I spin, but I can play twenty-three
games on the cards. I can dance the last dance, I can hunt the stag, and I
think I could shoot flying. I can talk as wicked as any woman of my years,
and know enough stories to amuse a sulky husband for at least one thousand
and one nights. I have a pretty taste for dress, diamonds, gambling, and
old china. I love sugar-plums, Malines lace (that you brought me, cousin,
is very pretty), the opera, and everything that is useless and costly. I
have got a monkey and a little black boy--Pompey, sir, go and give a dish
of chocolate to Colonel Graveairs,--and a parrot and a spaniel, and I must
have a husband. Cupid, you hear?"

"Iss, missis," says Pompey, a little grinning negro Lord Peterborow gave
her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his
mistress's name on it.

"Iss, missis!" says Beatrix, imitating the child. "And if husband not
come, Pompey must go fetch one."

And Pompey went away grinning with his chocolate tray, as Miss Beatrix ran
up to her mother and ended her sally of mischief in her common way, with a
kiss--no wonder that upon paying such a penalty her fond judge pardoned
her.

-------------------------------------

When Mr. Esmond came home, his health was still shattered; and he took a
lodging near to his mistress's, at Kensington, glad enough to be served by
them, and to see them day after day. He was enabled to see a little
company--and of the sort he liked best. Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison both did
him the honour to visit him: and drank many a flask of good claret at his
lodging, whilst their entertainer, through his wound, was kept to diet
drink and gruel. These gentlemen were Whigs, and great admirers of my Lord
Duke of Marlborough; and Esmond was entirely of the other party. But their
different views of politics did not prevent the gentlemen from agreeing in
private, nor from allowing, on one evening when Esmond's kind old patron,
Lieutenant-General Webb, with a stick and a crutch, hobbled up to the
colonel's lodging (which was prettily situate at Knightsbridge, between
London and