.

Our courtship-days, they say, are our best days. Favour destroys
courtship. Distance increases it. Its essence is distance. And, to see
how familiar these men-wretches grow upon a smile, what an awe they are
struck into when we frown; who would not make them stand off? Who would
not enjoy a power, that is to be short-lived?

Don't chide me one bit for this, my dear. It is in nature. I can't help
it. Nay, for that matter, I love it, and wish not to help it. So spare
your gravity, I beseech you on this subject. I set up not for a perfect
character. The man will bear it. And what need you care? My mother
overbalances all he suffers: And if he thinks himself unhappy, he ought
never to be otherwise.

Then did he not deserve a fit of the sullens, think you, to make us lose
our dinner for his parade, since in so short a journey my mother would
not bait, and lose the opportunity of coming back that night, had the
old lady's condition permitted it? To say nothing of being the cause,
that my mamma was in the glout with her poor daughter all the way.

At our alighting I gave him another dab; but it was but a little one.
Yet the manner, and the air, made up (as I intended they should) for
that defect. My mother's hand was kindly put into his, with a simpering
altogether bridal; and with another How do you now, Sir?--All his plump
muscles were in motion, and a double charge of care and obsequiousness
fidgeted up his whole form, when he offered to me his officious palm.
My mother, when I was a girl, always bid me hold up my head. I just then
remembered her commands, and was dutiful--I never held up my head so
high. With an averted supercilious eye, and a rejecting hand, half
flourishing--I have no need of help, Sir!--You are in my way.

He ran back, as if on wheels; with a face excessively mortified: I had
thoughts else to have followed the too-gentle touch, with a declaration,
that I had as many hands and feet as himself. But this would have been
telling him a piece of news, as to the latter, that I hope he had not
the presumption to guess at.

*****

We found the poor woman, as we thought, at the last gasp. Had we come
sooner, we could not have got away as we intended, that night. You see I
am for excusing the man all I can; and yet, I assure you, I have not so
much as a conditional liking to him. My mother sat up most part of the
night, expecting every hour would have been her poor cousin's last. I
bore her company