Page:Romance & Reality 3.pdf/128

126 A cold shiver ran over Emily at the very idea of Mrs. Higgs's "nice young men." Her son at that moment came up, by way of a specimen. "By Jove, mother, we thought we had lost you! rather a large loss that would have been." Seeing that the cause of her lingering was, however, a lady, and one who was both pretty and young, Mr. Robert Higgs, who was an admirer, or, to use his own favourite phrase, "always the humble servant of the ladies," thought, to employ another of his little peculiarities of speech, "his company would be as good as his place;" and, with that quiet, comfortable conviction of his own merits, which sets a man most and soonest at ease, he coolly addressed Miss Arundel:—"Quite, as our great bard says, Beautiful lines those of Byron. Don't you admire him, ma'am?" Mr. R. Higgs considered poetry an infallible topic with young ladies. Emily, however, did not feel that the courteous attention which his mother's age made in her eyes indispensable, at all necessary to be extended to her very forward son.