“Here is Miss Hester,” said the Colonel, “and this is Miss Theo, the soup-maker, the tailoress, the harpsichord-player, and the songstress, who set you to sleep last night. Make a curtsey to the gentleman, young ladies! Oh, I forgot, and Theo is the mistress of the roses which you admired a short while since in your bedroom. I think she has kept some of them in her cheeks.”
In fact, Miss Theo was making a profound curtsey and blushing most modestly as her papa spoke. I am not going to describe her person,—though we shall see a great deal of her in the course of this history. She was not a particular beauty. Harry Warrington was not over head and ears in love with her at an instant's warning, and faithless to—to that other individual with whom, as we have seen, the youth had lately been smitten. Miss Theo had kind eyes and a sweet voice; a ruddy freckled cheek and a round white neck, on which, out of a little cap such as misses wore in those times, fell rich curling clusters of dark brown hair. She was not a delicate or sentimental-looking person. Her arms, which were worn bare from the elbow like other ladies' arms in those days, were very jolly and red. Her feet were not so miraculously small but that you could see them without a telescope. There was nothing waspish about her waist. This young person was sixteen years of age, and looked older. I don't know what call she had to blush so when she made her curtsey to the stranger. It was such a deep ceremonial curtsey as you never see at present. She and her sister both made these “cheeses” in compliment to the new comer, and with much stately agility.
As Miss Theo rose up out of this salute, her papa tapped her under the chin (which was of the double sort of chins), and laughingly hummed out the line which he had read the day. “Eh bien! que dites-vous, ma fille, de notre hote?”
“Nonsense, Mr. Lambert!” cries mamma.
“Nonsense is sometimes the best kind of sense in the world,” said Colonel Lambert. His guest looked puzzled.
“Are you fond of nonsense?” the Colonel continued to Harry, seeing by the boy's face that the latter had no great love or comprehension of his favourite humour. “We consume a vast deal of it in this house. Rabelais is my favourite reading. My wife is all for Mr. Fielding and Theophrastus. I think Theo prefers Tom Brown, and Mrs. Hetty here loves Dean Swift.”
“Our papa is talking what he loves,” says Miss Hetty.
“And what is that, miss?” asks the father of his second daughter.
“Sure, sir, you said yourself it was nonsense,” answers the young lady, with a saucy toss of her head.
“Which of them do you like best, Mr. Warrington?” asked the honest Colonel.