Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/16

Rh perverse weathercock of thine point now ? What is the matter with the · Shy gentleman' -hey?"

"There, there ! By heaven I knew it, I knew how it was -I'm not quite so blind as some people think we-I'm not deaf-"

"No, nor dumb either, faith-I'll say that for you friend Tom; you talked last night for the next hundred years. But how do you like my cousin ? she has done nothing but talk of you this morning—”

"Yes-and she did nothing but laugh at me last night." Out it came; I could hold no longer.

"Laugh at you ; with you, you mean; why, you were the merriest couple in the room."

"Except yourselves, after she left me—"

"Well, what if we did laugh- you can't expect to have all the laughing to yourself."

"O no-by no means-not I; you may laugh till doomsday; only I wish you would find somebody else to laugh at."

"Somebody else!-Why, what do you mean, Tom?"

"Why, sir-I mean that you were laughing at me, from the moment she left my side," cried I, stalking about the room in great wrath.

"No such thing upon my serious honour ; we should both scorn such ill manners, and particularly towards you. She was describing the airs and affectation of a party of fashionable upstarts she met"" in the steam-boat, returning from a tour down the Rhine."

"What did you keep looking at me every now and then for?"

"She was comparing you with what you were at school, and saying how little you were altered, except for the better."

"Now Harry, upon your honour, remember- "

"Upon my honour then, this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth-except, indeed—”

"Except what?" "Except that she expressed her pleasure at again meeting you, and her hope that she should see you often. What say you to paying her a morning visit-hey?"

"With all my heart-for she's a fine woman."

I repeated my visits day after day, till I began to feel quite easy in the society of my little dancing partner, who gained vastly in my good graces ever since I heard she thought me so much altered for the better. I remembered, at our first interview, she told me how proud she was in being the favourite of the