“Thefts!”
“Ay; stolen hearts, and,” added I, in a whisper, “glances; Jupiter, partly because of your lightning, which you lock up in the said glances,—principally because all things are subservient to you; Neptune, because you are as changeable as the seas; Vulcan, because you live among the flames you excite; and Mars, because—”
“You are so destructive,” cried my uncle.
“Exactly so; and because,” added I—as I shut the door upon the beauty—“because, thanks to your hoop, you cover nine acres of ground.”
“Ods fish, Morton,” said my uncle, “you surprise me at times: one while you are so reserved, at another so assured; to-day so brisk, to-morrow so gloomy. Why now, Lady Hasselton (she is very comely, eh! faith, but not comparable to her mother) told me, a week ago, that she, gave you up in despair, that you were dull, past hoping for; and now, ‘Gad, you had a life in you that Sid himself could not have surpassed. How comes it, Sir, eh?”
“Why, Uncle, you have explained the reason; it was exactly because she said I was dull that I was resolved to convict her in an untruth.”
“Well, now, there is some sense in that, boy; always contradict ill report by personal merit. But what think you of her ladyship? ‘Gad, you know what old Bellair said of Emilia. ‘Make much of her: she’s one of the best of your acquaintance. I like her countenance and behaviour. Well, she has a modesty not i’ this age, a-dad she has.’ Applicable enough; eh, boy?”
“‘I know her value, Sir, and esteem her accordingly,’” answered I, out of the same play, which by dint of long study I had got by heart. “But, to confess the truth,” added I, “I think you might have left out the passage about her modesty.”
“There, now; you young chaps are so censorious; why, ‘sdeath, sir, you don’t think the worse of her virtue because of her wit?”
“Humph!”