rwise engaged. I could not help an air a little upon the fretful,
when I found she had nothing of moment to say to me, and when I saw her
intention.

She smiled off the visible fretfulness, that the man might go away in
good humour with himself.

He bowed to the ground, and would have taken my hand, his whip in the
other. I did not like to be so companioned: I withdrew my hand, but
touched his elbow with a motion, as if from his low bow I had supposed
him falling, and would have helped him up--A sad slip, it might have
been! said I.

A mad girl! smiled it off my mother.

He was quite put out; took his horse-bridle, stumped back, back, back,
bowing, till he run against his servant. I laughed. He mounted his
horse. I mounted up stairs, after a little lecture; and my head is so
filled with him, that I must resume my intention, in hopes to divert you
for a few moments.

Take it then--his best, and his worst, as I said before.

Hickman is a sort of fiddling, busy, yet, to borrow a word from you,
unbusy man: has a great deal to do, and seems to me to dispatch nothing.
Irresolute and changeable in every thing, but in teasing me with his
nonsense; which yet, it is evident, he must continue upon my mother's
interest more than upon his own hopes; for none have I given him.

Then I have a quarrel against his face, though in his person, for
a well-thriven man, tolerably genteel--Not to his features so much
neither; for what, as you have often observed, are features in a
man?--But Hickman, with strong lines, and big cheek and chin bones,
has not the manliness in his aspect, which Lovelace has with the most
regular and agreeable features.

Then what a set and formal mortal he is in some things!--I have not been
able yet to laugh him out of his long bid and beads. Indeed, that is,
because my mother thinks they become him; and I would not be so free
with him, as to own I should choose to have him leave it off. If he did,
so particular is the man, he would certainly, if left to himself, fall
into a King-William's cravat, or some such antique chin-cushion, as by
the pictures of that prince one sees was then the fashion.

As to his dress in general, he cannot indeed be called a sloven, but
sometimes he is too gaudy, at other times too plain, to be uniformly
elegant. And for his manners, he makes such a bustle with them, and
about them, as would induce one to suspect that they are more strangers
than familiars to him. You, I kno