"On the day previous to his departure for Newcastle, he said he wished to ask a favour of his kind master's only sister; but feared it might be deemed impertinent. Being encouraged to proceed—'Why, sir,' said the lad, 'your great goodness has left me nothing to desire since the first instant I entered your house; therefore, out of the allowance of pocket-money you have made me I have saved up eleven pounds, which I hope your sister will condescend to lay out for me in blankets and various other articles of comfort, which I am desirous of carrying down to my poor old parents.' The Jew gladly promised to prevail on his sister to do whatever he wished, and moreover assured the affectionate lad that he should be allowed to make a yearly visit to his parents as long as they lived, and always at his expense. 'Tell your parents that, though a Jew myself, I have not presumed to interfere with your former mode of worship; but, on the contrary, have made you regularly attend the service of the Church of England, ever since you left them.'"
Sophia was very much pleased with the story of the Newcastle shepherd-boy, and declared that she would go and see him.
Augustus thought he would play Romeo delightfully; but the colonel said the part of Douglas would suit him best.
I, by this time, conceived I had talked quite enough for one evening. I therefore endeavoured with all my might to call Sophia out, and draw her into some kind of conversation.
Berkeley was beginning to think himself trifled with, and, being naturally a little abrupt in such cases, he told her flatly that if she meant to refuse him after all, she ought not to have admitted him so often.
Sophia continued to hint, with proper delicacy and due modest blushes, that her living with him or not must depend on what his intentions were: in other words, she gently intimated that as yet she was ignorant what settlement he meant to make on her. The gay handsome Colonel Berkeley's vanity being now so deeply wounded, he in his sudden rage entirely lost sight of what was due to the soft sex, at least to that part of it which had been so hard upon him.
"Do you fancy me then so humble and so void of taste as to buy with my money the reluctant embraces of any woman breathing? Do you think I cannot find friends who have proved their affection by the sacrifices they have made for me, that I should give my money to buy the cold-blooded being who calculates at fifteen years of age what the prostitution of her person ought to sell for?"
Sophia was frightened and shed tears.
"Colonel Berkeley," said I, "we are your visitors and wish to retire immediately from such unmanly insult as you have offered to us. Will you procure us some safe conveyance? No matter what."