I made as little answer as possible, finding everything I said seemed but the more to inflame his violent spirit; but his emotion was such, and the cause so inadequate, and my uncertainty so unpleasant what to think of him altogether, that I was seized with sensations so nervous, I Could almost have cried. In the full torrent of his offended justification against my displeasure towards him, he perceived my increasing distress how to proceed, and, suddenly stopping, exclaimed in quite another tone, “Now, then, ma’am, I see your justice returning; you feel that you have used me very ill!”
To my great relief entered Miss Planta. He contrived to say, “Remember, you promise to explain all this.”
I made him no sort of answer, and though he frequently, in the course of the evening, repeated, “I depend upon your promise! I build upon a conference,” I sent his dependence and his building to Coventry, by not seeming to hear him.
I determined, however, to avoid all tête-à-têtes with him whatsoever, as much as was in my power. How very few people are fit for them, nobody living in trios and quartettos can imagine!
A CONCEITED PARSON.
Windsor.-Who should find me out now but Dr. Shepherd.[243] He is here as canon, and was in residence. He told me he had long wished to come, but had never been able to find the way of entrance before. He made me an immense length of visit, and related to me all the exploits of his life,-so far as they were prosperous. In no farce did a man ever more floridly open upon his own perfections. He assured me I should be delighted to know the whole of his life; it was equal to anything; and everything he had was got by his own address and ingenuity.
“I could tell the king,” cried he, “more than all the chapter. I want to talk to him, but he always gets out of my way; he does not know me; he takes me for a mere common person, like the rest of the canons here, and thinks of me no more than if I were only fit for the cassock;—a mere Scotch priest! Bless ‘em!—they know nothing about me. You have no conception what things I have done! And I want to tell ‘em all this;—It’s fitter for them to hear than what comes to their ears. What I want is for somebody to tell them what I am.”
They know it already, thought I.