He was at the time in high good humour; we were sitting over our
bottle of claret, after an excellent _tete-a-tete_ dinner, during
which I contributed very much to his amusement by the recital of some
of my late adventures. He shuddered at my danger in the hurricane, and
his good-humoured sides had well nigh cracked with laughter when I
recounted my pranks at Quebec and Prince Edward's Island. When I spoke
of Miss Somerville, my father said he had no doubt she would be happy
to see me--that she was now grown a very beautiful girl, and was the
toast of the county.
I received this information with an apparent cool indifference which I
was far from feeling inwardly, for my heart beat at the intelligence.
"Perhaps," said I, picking my teeth, and looking at my mouth in a
little ivory _etui_--"perhaps she may be grown a fine girl: she
bade fair to be so when I saw her; but fine girls are very plenty
now-a-days, since the Vaccine has turned out the small-pox. Besides,
the girls have now another chance of a good shape; they are allowed
to take the air, instead of sitting all day, with their feet in the
stocks and their dear sweet noses bent over a French grammar, under
the rod of a French governess."
Why I took so much pains to conceal from the best of parents the real
state of my heart, I know not, except that, from habit, deceit was to
me more readily at hand than candour; certainly my attachment to this
fair and virtuous creature could not cause me to blush, except at my
own unworthiness of so much excellence.
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