"Miss Hendy," said Mr Pitskiver for the tenth time, "this is the regular feast and flow; and nothing pleases me so much in my good friend Bristles as his candid praise of other men's talents. You seldom find clever people allowing each other's merits."
"Or stupid ones either"—replied Mr Bristles before the lady had time to answer; "the fact is, we are much improved since former days. Our great men don't quarrel as they used to do—conscious of one's own dignity, why refuse a just appreciation of others? Stickleback has often told me, that Chantrey was not altogether without merit—I myself pronounce Macauley far from stupid; and my intellectual friend, young Sidsby, who will read us the first act of his tragedy to-night, allows a very respectable degree of dramatic power to Lord Byron. Surely this is a far better state of things than the perpetual carpings of Popes and Addisons, Smiths and Johnsons, Foxes and Pitts."
"And all owing to the rising influence of the female sex," interposed Miss Hendy. "But woman has not yet received her full development. The time will come when her influence is universal; when, softened, subdued, purified, and elevated, the animal now called Man will be unknown. You will be all women—can the world look for higher destiny?"
"In cooss," observed Mr Whalley—"if we are all turned into woming, the world will come to a end. For 'spose a case;—'spose it had been my sister as married Mrs Whalley instead of me—it's probable there wouldn't have been no great fambly; wich in cooss, if there was no poppleation"—
But what the fearful result of this supposed case would have been, has never been discovered; for Miss Hendy, making a signal to the four representatives of the female sex started out of the room as if she had heard Mr Whalley had the plague, and left the gentlemen to themselves.
"De Staël was no match for that wonderful woman," said Mr Bristles, resuming his chair. "I don't believe so noble an intellect was ever enshrined in so beautiful a form before."
"Do you think her pretty?" enquired Mr Pitskiver.
"Pretty? no, sir—beautiful! Here is the finest sort of loveliness—the light blazing from within, that years cannot extinguish. I consider Miss Hendy the finest woman in England; and decidedly the most intellectual."
The fact of Miss Hendy's beauty had never struck Mr Pitskiver before. But he knew that Bristles was a judge, and took it at once for granted. The finest woman in England had looked in a most marvellous manner into his face, and the small incident of the foot under the table was not forgotten.
Mr Pitskiver was inspired by the subject of his contemplations, and proposed her health in a strain of eloquence which produced a wonderful amount of head-shaking from Mr Whalley, and frequent exclamations of "Demosthenes," "Cicero," "Burke all over!" from the more enraptured Mr Bristles.