"Your brown face and red arms will pass well enough," said Eustace; "but they must be blind idiots, who mistake our pretty Constance for a market girl." "I will bind up my face as if I had the tooth-ache," said she; "and talk broad Lancashire, till I come to the Marquis's quarters." Williams observed that their danger would then begin.
The girls started, saying, they hoped they should then be in safety. "You know not, my dear mistresses," said Williams, "the habits of camps, nor the licence of gay, dissipated cavaliers, conscious of conferring obligations on their King, and claiming from their occasional hardships a right to indulgence. It is a bad situation for handsome young women, but I have it in charge, in case I cannot deliver you into the care of my old master, to take you on to Oxford, and place you with an old college-friend of Dr. Beaumont's."
Eustace, whose heart had exulted at the idea of being fixed in the scene of action, and of being permitted to endeavour to remove the prohibition of his taking arms, strenuously opposed the plan of an Oxford residence, as still more improper for young ladies, protesting that the flatteries of a court and a university were more dangerous than the free licence of military manners. He then began to caution Constantia, assuring her she must not believe all that would be told her about the power of her eyes to make men miserable, and about Venus and Hebe, and a great many more nonsensical comparisons. "If I do," returned she, "it will do me no harm. A woman is not more beloved for being handsome. There is our dear aunt Mellicent; her face, you know, is the colour of a cowslip, and all seamed and puckered, yet we could not love her better than we do, if she were ever so beautiful."
Eustace allowed that she was a very good woman, though he could well spare her putting him to rights, as she called it, quite so often. He fancied, too, he knew some people more agreeable.--Isabel thought when women were young, they always liked to be called handsome, and recollected she often heard her aunt say, that before she had the small-pox, she was thought very comely, and had many lovers. Eustace burst into a loud laugh, and said so many provoking things on the misfortune of old maids being reduced to record their own victories, that his companions protested they would be very angry, and not speak to him till he sung them a song of his own composition, by way of penance. He submitted cheerfully to the punishment, and caroled the following canzonet, as they proceeded in safety to the borders of Yorkshire:--