Last Tuesday, I was sitting by a young lady whom I have talked with more than once; her name is Newton. I do not quite know how we got on to the subject, but we began to talk politics. I said I could not understand why it was, but people in the South did not seem to care for politics nearly so much as I was accustomed to see done. Half the ladies in the room appeared to be trimmers; and many more wore the red ribbon alone. Such people, with us, would never be received into a Tory family.
“We do not take things so seriously as you,” said she, with a diverted look. “That with us is an opinion which with you is an enthusiasm. I suppose up there, where the sun never shines, you have to make some sort of noise and fuss to keep yourselves alive.”
“‘The sun never shines!’” cried I. “Now, really, Miss Newton! You don’t mean to say you believe that story?”
“I am only repeating what I have been told,” said she. “I never was north of Barnet.”
“We are alive enough,” said I. “I wonder if you are. It looks to me much more like living, to make beds and boil puddings and stitch shirts, than to sit on a sofa in a satin gown, flickering a fan and talking rubbish.”
“Oh, fie!” said Miss Newton, laughing, and tapping me on the arm with her fan. “That really will not do, Miss Courtenay. You will shock everybody in the room.”
“I can tell you, most whom I see here shock me,” said I. “They seem to have no honour and no honesty. They think white and they wear red, or the other way about, just as it happens. If the Prince were to enter London on Monday, what colour would all these ribbons be next Tuesday night?”
“The colour of yours, undoubtedly,” she said, laughing.
“And do you call that honesty?” said I. “These people could not change their opinions and feelings between Monday and Tuesday: and to change their ribbons without them would be simply falsehood.”
“I told you, you take things so seriously!” she answered.