What a strange, unaccountable character!  For with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper, was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny.  She was noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.

Such was Catherine Morland at ten.  At fifteen, appearances were mending:  she began to curl her hair and long for balls, her complexion improved, her features were softened by plumpness and colour, her eyes gained more animation, and her figure more consequence.  Her love of dirt gave way to an inclination for finery; she grew clean and she grew smart; and she had now the pleasure of sometimes hearing her father and mother remark on her personal improvement.  From fifteen, indeed, to seventeen, she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.

So far her improvement was sufficient; and in many other points she came on exceedingly well, for though she could not write sonnets, she brought herself to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte of her own composition, she could listen to other people’s performances with very little fatigue.

Her greatest deficiency was in the pencil.  She had no notion of drawing, not enough even to attempt a sketch of her lover’s profile, that she might be detected in the design.  There she fell miserably short of the true heroic height.  At present she did not know her own poverty, for she had no lover to portray.  There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no, not even a baronet!  There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door; no, not one young man whose origin was unknown.  Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.  But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her.  Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.

Mr. Allen, who owned the chief of the property about Fullerton, the village in Wiltshire where the Morland family lived, was ordered to Bath for the benefit of a gouty constitution; and his lady, a good-humoured woman, fond of Miss Morland, and probably aware that if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village she must seek them abroad, invited her to go with them.  Mr. and Mrs. Morland were all compliance, and Catherine all happiness.

II.—­In the Gay City of Bath

When the hour for departure drew nigh, the maternal anxiety of Mrs. Morland will be naturally supposed to have been most severe.  But she knew so little of lords and baronets that she entertained no notion of their general mischievousness, and was wholly unsuspicious of danger to her daughter from their machinations.  Her cautions were confined to advising her to wrap up well when she came from the rooms at night, and to try to keep some account of the money she spent.