"How do you do? how do you do?" said Lord Fife, as he joined us near Cumberland Gate. "Who is your friend?" he continued, appearing to eye Miss Higgins with looks of admiration, much to my astonishment. "Am I not to be introduced to your friend?"
"_Et pourquoi pas?_" said I, naming Miss Higgins, with whom he conversed, as though her acquaintance had been the thing on earth most devoutly to be wished.
"What a funny little bonnet you have got on!" said his lordship to my companion, interrupting himself in the middle of a long story from the North.
After Lord Fife had left us, Miss Eliza Higgins could speak of nothing else.
"Charming man, ma'am, the Earl of Fife! I have heard much of him; but never had the honour to be presented to him before. That is a man now, a poor weak female would find it very difficult to resist. His Lordship is so condescending! so polite!"
When we were tired of walking in the park, I drove to the house of a married sister of mine, whose name we will call Paragon, since she was the very paragon of mothers, having drawn up a new, patent system of education for her children, better than Jean Jacques Rousseau's, and unlike everybody's else.
Her family consists of two boys and two girls. The eldest daughter was then nearly seven years of age: her son and heir had scarcely attained his fifth year. "They shall never go to school," said my sister Paragon, "nor will I suffer them to be left one instant to the care of nurses or servants, to learn bad grammar and worse morals. Neither shall they be told of such things as thieves or murderers; much less shall they hear anything about falsehood and deceit. They shall never obtain what they want by tears nor rudeness after the age of two; and it shall depend on the politeness and humility of their deportment, whether they have any dinner or not; and nothing shall be called indecent which is natural, either in words or deeds. So much for the minds of my children; and, with regard to their bodily health, I shall make them swallow one of Anderson's Scot's Aperient Pills every night of their blessed lives! _et il n'y aura rien à craindre!_"
Sister Paragon was very pretty. She had the sweetest, most lovely eyes I ever beheld: and not because they were large, or of the finest hazel colour; I allude to their character and expression; now flashing with indignation, now soft, and yet so bright that one might almost see one's own reflected in them. Paragon's little nose too was very pretty, even when red and frost-bitten; and she had a beautiful mole on her clear brown cheek. She did not at all resemble either a paragon or a prude; and yet I am the only one of all our family who am not afraid of her wit or her virtue. She married a gentleman of good family and connections, though poor; and, when she did this, she almost broke the tender heart of the reverend Orange patriot, Sir Harcourt Lees, baronet, of Irish notoriety, who had often proposed to her on his knees, and on his--seat, and with his whole heart! "He was a good little fellow," Paragon would often say, "but his face was so like a knocker!"