Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/209

 while her cheeks turned to the colour of my shoulders.

"Oh, your la'ship!" she blubbered, with a deal of tragicality, "say not so."

"Simpleton," says I, sternly. "I shall begin to think you regard this beggar—this rebel—this adventurer—almost like a brother if you so persistently bear yourself in this way when I mention quite incidentally, as it were, his proper and natural destination."

"He hath most lovely eyes, your ladyship," says she, and wept more bitterly.

"Ods-body! you are not so far wrong there," says I, turning a sigh into a yawn adroitly. "Hath he kissed you yet?"

"Once, I think, ma'am," she answers, with a modest rose appearing through her pallor.

"Hath he an opinion of you, then, or was it pastime, merely?"

"'A told me I was kissable," says she, "a pretty downcast sort of wench, your la'ship, and swore upon his beard that if he came out of this predicament with his heart still underneath his chin he'd the best half of his mind to marry me."

Here the hussy sighed so desperately from the full depth of her bosom that a spasm was provoked within my own. To allay that pain I took the love-*sick Mrs. Emblem by the arm and pinched her till she forgot her heart-ache in one that was less poetical.

Retiring to my earned repose, I found sleep at