You bid me be good; and you threaten me, if I am not, with the ill opinion of all your friends:  but I have such an unaccountable bias for roguery, or what shall I call it? that I believe it is impossible for me to take your advice.  I have been examining myself.  What a deuse is the matter with me, that I cannot see my honest man in the same advantageous light in which he appears to everybody else?  Yet I do not, in my heart, dislike him.  On the contrary, I know not, were I to look about me, far and wide, the man I would have wished to have called mine, rather than him.  But he is so important about trifles; so nimble, yet so slow:  he is so sensible of his own intention to please, and has so many antic motions in his obligingness; that I cannot forbear laughing at the very time that I ought perhaps to reward him with a gracious approbation.

I must fool on a little while longer, I believe:  permit me, Harriet, so to do, as occasions arise.

***

An instance, an instance in point, Harriet.  Let me laugh as I write.  I did at the time.—­What do you laugh at, Charlotte?—­Why this poor man, or, as I should rather say, this lord and master of mine, has just left me.  He has been making me both a compliment, and a present.  And what do you think the compliment is?  Why, if I please, he will give away to a virtuoso friend, his collection of moths and butterflies:  I once, he remembered, rallied him upon them.  And by what study, thought I, wilt thou, honest man, supply their place?  If thou hast a talent this way, pursue it; since perhaps thou wilt not shine in any other.  And the best any thing, you know, Harriet, carries with it the appearance of excellence.  Nay, he would also part with his collection of shells, if I had no objection.

To whom, my lord?—­He had not resolved.—­Why then, only as Emily is too little of a child, or you might give them to her.  ’Too little of a child, madam!’ and a great deal of bustle and importance took possession of his features—­Let me tell you, madam—­I won’t let you, my lord; and I laughed.

Well, madam, I hope here is something coming up that you will not disdain to accept of yourself.

Up came groaning under the weight, or rather under the care, two servants with baskets:  a fine set of old Japan china with brown edges, believe me.  They sat down their baskets, and withdrew.

Would you not have been delighted, Harriet, to see my lord busying himself with taking out, and putting in the windows, one at a time, the cups, plates, jars, and saucers, rejoicing and parading over them, and shewing his connoisseurship to his motionless admiring wife, in commending this and the other piece as a beauty?  And, when he had done, taking the liberty, as he phrased it, half fearful, half resolute, to salute his bride for his reward; and then pacing backwards several steps, with such a strut and a crow—­I see him yet!—­Indulge me, Harriet!—­I burst into a hearty laugh; I could not help it: