Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/191

 on my lord was most astounding. Before or since I have not seen a girl eat like it.

"Oh, I am a cruel, horrid thing," says I to my aunt. "To think of that poor child having come a journey, and being several hours in this house, and I not to have offered her a morsel till just now."

"Barbara," says my aunt to me, and sweetly, "in your absence from my tea-table I entreated her to partake of muffins and bohea. She had the goodness to reply that she had no partiality for sops, as she was neither a baby nor a bird."

"La, that's my Prue," cries I, laughing out aloud; "she is the dearest, originalest creature. Oh, the quaint girl! sure I can see her saying that with a merry twinkling sort of look!"

"Similar to the one she is now displaying to his lordship," says my aunt.

"Well, scarcely," I replied, "her expression would be rather drier and more contained than that. And oh, dear aunt! I had better tell you that this madcap, Prue, takes a particular delight in surprising and disconcerting those who are insufficiently acquainted with her character."

"She very well succeeds," my aunt said. "Yet, my dear, I must confess that you astound me. Her letters are perfect piety; they paint her as the soul of modesty, and quite marvellously correct. I should have judged her to be a highly genteel person."

"On the strength of her epistles, I should also," I replied, "but then I know my wicked, roguish