“Lizzie, how can you talk such nonsense?”
“It is the truth, and you may have occasion to realise it yet. With you it is all or nothing, and when you fall in love I confess I shall feel anxious—you will give so much, and may receive so little. Well, there, no one can help you! Fate shuffles the cards and you have yet to meet your destiny. Shall I give you one or two scraps of worldly advice, my dear?”
“Yes, do,” I urged eagerly.
“Well, when you go into the big world be careful how you choose your associates; people are judged by their friends.”
“Are they? I should not have thought so.”
“Try, if you can, not to talk of yourself.”
“Yes, I’ll do my best, but I have not much else to talk about, have I?”
“There will be plenty of topics once you are out of your little groove. In Vanity Fair I dare say you may receive a share of knocks and bruises among others hustling in the market-place, but whatever these may be do not show them! All I am advising is simply worldly wisdom, and my most urgent important injunction comes last: do not give your confidence to every agreeable woman, or your heart to the first insidious and good-looking man who gazes into your eyes, and tells you that you are pretty and a darling. Wait and look round, for with you to love, is for always.”
I felt unexpectedly embarrassed; my face felt hot, as I listened to these intimate personal directions, and I hastened to turn the conversation to Beke and its inhabitants.
In answer to my questions Lizzie informed me that her uncle had taken over the whole of “The Roost,” and paid her a rental of twenty pounds a year. The house was now occupied by Mrs. Puckle’s married daughter and her three children; with long visitations from Mrs. Puckle’s actor son when—as so frequently happened—he found himself “out of a shop.”