"Irish! Ah, I remember; and she is gone to settle in Ireland. I do not wonder that you should not wish to go with her into that country, Miss Emma; but it must be a great deprivation to her, poor lady! after bringing you up like a child of her own."
"I was not so ungrateful, sir," said Emma, warmly, "as to wish to be anywhere but with her. It did not suit Captain O'Brien that I should be of the party."
"Captain!" repeated Mrs. Edwards. "The gentleman is in the army, then?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Aye, there is nothing like your officers for captivating the ladies, young or old. There is no resisting a cockade, my dear."
"I hope there is," said Mrs. Edwards gravely, with a quick glance at her daughter; and Emma had just recovered from her own perturbation in time to see a blush on Miss Edwards' cheek; and, in remembering what Elizabeth had said of Captain Hunter, to wonder and waver between his influence and her brother's.
"Elderly ladies should be careful how they make a second choice," observed Mr. Edwards.
"Carefulness and discretion should not be confined to elderly ladies, or to a second choice," added his wife. "They are quite as necessary to young ladies in their first."
"Rather more so, my dear," replied he; "because young ladies are likely to feel the effects of it longer. When an old lady plays the fool, it is not in the course of nature that she should suffer from it many years."