“Selina, do you ever read them?”—And, with a sigh, the little girl answered—
“But too often!—-I wish I did not.”
The only thing I did not like in this seducing little creature was our leave-taking. The S. S. had, as we expected, her fine eyes suffused with tears, and nothing would serve the little Selina, who admires the S. S. passionately, but that she, also, must weep—and weep, therefore, she did, and that in a manner as pretty to look at, as soft, as melting, and as little to her discomposure, as the weeping of her fair exemplar. The child's success in this pathetic art made the tears of both appear to the whole party to be lodged, as the English merchant says, “very near the eyes!”
Doubtful as it is whether we shall ever see this sweet syren again, nothing, as Mrs. Thrale said to her, can be more certain than that we shall hear of her again, let her go whither she will.
Charmed as we all were with her, we all agreed that to have the care of her would be distraction! “She seems the girl in the world,” Mrs. Thrale wisely said, “to attain the highest reach of human perfection as a man's mistress!—as such she would be a second Cleopatra, and have the world at her command.”
Poor thing! I hope to heaven she will escape such sovereignty and such honours!
AT BRIGHTON: A “CURE.” THE JEALOUS CUMBERLANDS.
We left Tunbridge Wells, and got, by dinner time, to our first stage, Uckfield. Our next stage brought us to Brighthelmstone, where I fancy we shall stay till the Parliament calls away Mr. Thrale.[106]
The morning after our arrival, our first visit was from Mr Kipping, the apothecary, a character so curious that Foote[107] designed him for his next piece, before he knew he had already written his last. He is a prating, good-humoured old gossip, who runs on in as incoherent and unconnected a style of discourse as Rose Fuller, though not so tonish.