We have said nothing but No and Yes ever since; and I wish I was with you for a month, and all their nonsense over without me.  I am, my dear, obliging, and excellent Mrs. B., your faithful and affectionate

Polly Darnford.

The two following anticipating the order of time, for the reasons formerly mentioned, we insert here.

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LETTER XXXV

From Miss Darnford to Mrs. B.

MY DEAR MRS. B.,

Pray give my service to your Mr. B. and tell him he is very impolite in his reflections upon me, as to Mr. Murray, when he supposes I regret the loss of him.  You are much more favourable and just too, I will say, to your Polly Damford.  These gentlemen, the very best of them, are such indelicates!  They think so highly of their saucy selves, and confident sex, as if a lady cannot from her heart despise them; but if she turns them off, as they deserve, and continues her dislike, what should be interpreted in her favour, as a just and regular conduct, is turned against her, and it must proceed from spite.  Mr. B. may think he knows much of the sex.  But were I as malicious as he is reflecting (and yet, if I have any malice, he has raised it), I could say, that his acquaintance, was not with the most unexceptionable, till he knew you:  and he has not long enough been happy in you, I find, to do justice to those who are proud to emulate your virtues.

I say, Mrs. B., there can be no living with these men upon such beginnings.  They ought to know their distance, or be taught it, and not to think it in their power to confer that as a favour, which they should esteem it an honour to receive.

But neither can I bear, it seems, the preparatives to matrimony, the fine clothes, the compliments, the busy novelty, as he calls it, the new equipages, and so forth.

That’s his mistake again, tell him:  for one who can look forwarder than the nine days of wonder, can easily despise so flashy and so transient a glare.  And were I fond of compliments, it would not, perhaps, be the way to be pleased, in that respect, if I were to marry.

Compliments in the single state are a lady’s due, whether courted or not; and she receives, or ought always to receive them, as such; but in courtship they are poured out upon one, like a hasty shower, soon to be over.  A mighty comfortable consideration this, to a lady who loves to be complimented!  Instead of the refreshing April-like showers, which beautify the sun-shine, she shall stand a deluge of complaisance, be wet to the skin with it; and what then?  Why be in a Lybian desert ever after!—­experience a constant parching drought and all her attributed excellencies will be swallowed up in the quicksands of matrimony.  It may be otherwise with you; and it must be so; because there is such an infinite variety in your excellence.  But does Mr. B. think it must be so in every matrimony?