hough an old maid. I
hope the old lady has not utterly lost either her invention, or memory;
and then, between both, I shall be entertained with a great number of
love-stories of the last age; and perhaps of some dangers and escapes;
which may serve for warnings for Emily. Alas! alas! they will come too
late for your Charlotte!

I have written already the longest letter that I ever wrote in my life:
yet it is prating; and to you, to whom I love to prate. I have not near
done.

You bid me be good; and you threaten me, if I am not, with the ill
opinion of all your friends: but I have such an unaccountable bias for
roguery, or what shall I call it? that I believe it is impossible for me
to take your advice. I have been examining myself. What a deuse is the
matter with me, that I cannot see my honest man in the same advantageous
light in which he appears to everybody else? Yet I do not, in my heart,
dislike him. On the contrary, I know not, were I to look about me, far
and wide, the man I would have wished to have called mine, rather than
him. But he is so important about trifles; so nimble, yet so slow: he is
so sensible of his own intention to please, and has so many antic motions
in his obligingness; that I cannot forbear laughing at the very time that
I ought perhaps to reward him with a gracious approbation.

I must fool on a little while longer, I believe: permit me, Harriet, so
to do, as occasions arise.

***

An instance, an instance in point, Harriet. Let me laugh as I write. I
did at the time.--What do you laugh at, Charlotte?--Why this poor man,
or, as I should rather say, this lord and master of mine, has just left
me. He has been making me both a compliment, and a present. And what do
you think the compliment is? Why, if I please, he will give away to a
virtuoso friend, his collection of moths and butterflies: I once, he
remembered, rallied him upon them. And by what study, thought I, wilt
thou, honest man, supply their place? If thou hast a talent this way,
pursue it; since perhaps thou wilt not shine in any other. And the best
any thing, you know, Harriet, carries with it the appearance of
excellence. Nay, he would also part with his collection of shells, if I
had no objection.

To whom, my lord?--He had not resolved.--Why then, only as Emily is too
little of a child, or you might give them to her. 'Too little of a
child, madam!' and a great deal of bustle and importance took possession
of his fea