“’I look after her.  Madam!-My eyes sparkle at such a girl as that!  No indeed!  She may be your favourite as a waiting-maid; but I see nothing but clumsy curtseys and awkward airs about her.  A little rustic affectation of innocence, that to such as cannot see into her, may pass well enough.’

“‘Nay, my dear,’ replied my mother, ’don’t say that, of all things.  She has no affectation, I am sure.’

“’Yes, she has, in my eye, Madam, and I’ll tell you how it is; you have taught her to assume the airs of a gentlewoman, to dance, and to enter a room with a grace; and yet bid her keep her low birth and family in view:  and between the one character, which she wants to get into, and the other she dares not get out of, she trips up and down mincingly, and knows not how to set her feet:  so ’tis the same in every gesture:  her arms she knows not whether to swim with, or to hold before her, nor whether to hold her head up or down; and so does neither, but hangs it on one side:  a little awkward piece of one-and-t’other I think her.  And, indeed, you’d do the girl more kindness to put her into your dairy, than to keep her about your person; for she’ll be utterly spoiled, I doubt, for any useful purpose.’

“‘Ah, son!’ said she, ’I fear, by your description, you have minded her too much in one sense, though not enough in another.  ’Tis not my intention to recommend her to your notice, of all men; and I doubt not, if it please God I live, and she continues a good girl, but she will make a man of some middling, genteel business, very happy.’

“Pamela came in just then, with an air so natural, so humble, and yet so much above herself, that I was forced to turn my head from her, lest my mother should watch my eye again, and I be inclined to do her that justice, which my heart assented to, but which my lips had just before denied her.

“All my difficulty, in apprehension, was my good mother; the effect of whose lessons to her girl, I was not so much afraid of as her vigilance.  ‘For,’ thought I, ’I see by the delicacy of her person, the brilliancy of her eye, and the sweet apprehensiveness that plays about every feature of her face, she must have tinder enough in her constitution, to catch a well-struck spark; and I’ll warrant I shall know how to set her in a blaze, in a few months more.’

“Yet I wanted, as I passed, to catch her attention too:  I expected her to turn after me, and look so as to shew a liking towards me; for I had a great opinion of my person and air, which had been fortunately distinguished by the ladies, whom, of course, my vanity made me allow to be very good judges of these outward advantages.