shy--never weighed down
and oppressed by that miserable _mauvaise honte_ which torments and
constrains me elsewhere. So I conversed with this Irishman, and
laughed at his jests; and, though I saw faults in his character,
excused them because of the amusement his originality afforded. I
cooled a little, indeed, and drew in towards the latter part of the
evening, because he began to season his conversation with something of
Hibernian flattery, which I did not quite relish. However, they went
away, and no more was thought about them. A few days after, I got a
letter, the direction of which puzzled me, it being in a hand I was
not accustomed to see. Evidently, it was neither from you nor Mary,
my only correspondents. Having opened and read it, it proved to be a
declaration of attachment and proposal of matrimony, expressed in the
ardent language of the sapient young Irishman! I hope you are
laughing heartily. This is not like one of my adventures, is it? It
more nearly resembles Martha's. I am certainly doomed to be an old
maid. Never mind. I made up my mind to that fate ever since I was
twelve years old.

"Well! thought I, I have heard of love at first sight, but this beats
all! I leave you to guess what my answer would be, convinced that you
will not do me the injustice of guessing wrong."

On the 14th of August she still writes from Haworth:--

"I have in vain packed my box, and prepared everything for our
anticipated journey. It so happens that I can get no conveyance this
week or the next. The only gig let out to hire in Haworth, is at
Harrowgate, and likely to remain there, for aught I can hear. Papa
decidedly objects to my going by the coach, and walking to B., though
I am sure I could manage it. Aunt exclaims against the weather, and
the roads, and the four winds of heaven, so I am in a fix, and, what
is worse, so are you. On reading over, for the second or third time,
your last letter (which, by the by, was written in such hieroglyphics
that, at the first hasty perusal, I could hardly make out two
consecutive words), I find you intimate that if I leave this journey
till Thursday I shall be too late. I grieve that I should have so
inconvenienced you; but I need not talk of either Friday or Saturday
now, for I rather imagine there is small chance of my ever going at
all. The elders of the hou