I desired, that no part of this conversation might be hinted to my spouse; and looked still more bashfully. Her great fault, I must own, was over-delicacy.
The Captain leered round him; and said, he believed he could guess from the hints I had given him in town (of my over-love) and from what had now passed, that we had not consummated our marriage.
O Jack! how sheepishly then looked, or endeavoured to look, thy friend! how primly goody Moore! how affectedly Miss Rawlins!—while the honest widow Bevis gazed around her fearless; and though only simpering with her mouth, her eyes laughed outright, and seemed to challenge a laugh from every eye in the company.
He observed, that I was a phoenix of a man, if so; and he could not but hope that all matters would be happily accommodated in a day or two; and that then he should have the pleasure to aver to her uncle, that he was present, as he might say, on our wedding-day.
The women seemed all to join in the same hope.
Ah, Captain! Ah, Ladies! how happy should I be, if I could bring my dear spouse to be of the same mind!
It would be a very happy conclusion of a very knotty affair, said the widow Bevis; and I see not why we may not make this very night a merry one.
The Captain superciliously smiled at me. He saw plainly enough, he said, that we had been at children's play hitherto. A man of my character, who could give way to such a caprice as this, must have a prodigious value for his lady. But one thing he would venture to tell me; and that was this—that, however desirous young skittish ladies might be to have their way in this particular, it was a very bad setting-out for the man; as it gave his bride a very high proof of the power she had over him: and he would engage, that no woman, thus humoured, ever valued the man the more for it; but very much the contrary—and there were reasons to be given why she should not.
Well, well, Captain, no more of this subject before the ladies.—One feels [shrugging my shoulders in a bashful try-to-blush manner] that one is so ridiculous—I have been punished enough for my tender folly.
Miss Rawlins had taken her fan, and would needs hide her face behind it— I suppose because her blush was not quite ready.