“You are great readers, young ladies, I see: may we know what are your studies?”
Miss Fanshaw, to show how well she could walk, crossed the room, and took up one of the books.
“‘Alison upon Taste’—that’s a pretty book, I dare say—but la! what’s this, Miss Isabella? ‘A Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments’—dear me! that must be a curious performance—by a smith! a common smith!”
Isabella, good-naturedly, stopped her from farther absurd exclamations by turning to the title-page of the book and showing her the words “Adam Smith.”
“Ah! A stands for Adam! very true—I thought it was a smith,” said Miss Fanshaw.
“Well, my dear,” said her mother, who had quickness enough to perceive that her daughter had made some mistake, by the countenances of the company, but who had not sufficient erudition to know what the mistake could be—“well, my dear, and suppose it was a smith, there’s nothing extraordinary in that—nothing extraordinary in a smith’s writing a book nowadays,—why not a common blacksmith, as well as a common ploughman?—I was asked, I know, not long ago, to subscribe to the poems of a common ploughman.”
“The Ayrshire ploughman?” said Lady N——.
“Yes, they called him so, as I recollect, and I really had a mind to put my name down, for I think I saw your ladyship’s amongst the subscribers.”
“Yes, they are beautiful poems,” said Lady N——.
“So I understand—there are some vastly pretty things in his collection—but one hears of so many good things coming out every day,” said Mrs. Fanshaw, in a plaintive voice. “In these days, I think, every body writes—”