“Worldliness.  Oh, my pretty lady!  Do you think that I am a child in the nursery, and to be frightened by Bogey!  Worldliness, to be sure; and pray, madam, where is the harm of wishing to be comfortable?  When you are gone, you dearest old woman, or when I am tired of you and have run away from you, where shall I go?  Shall I go and be head nurse to my Popish sister-in-law, take the children their physic, and whip ’em, and put ’em to bed when they are naughty?  Shall I be Castlewood’s upper servant, and perhaps marry Tom Tusher?  Merci!  I have been long enough Frank’s humble servant.  Why am I not a man?  I have ten times his brains, and had I worn the—­well, don’t let your ladyship be frightened—­had I worn a sword and periwig instead of this mantle and commode to which nature has condemned me—­(though ’tis a pretty stuff, too—­Cousin Esmond! you will go to the Exchange to-morrow, and get the exact counterpart of this ribbon, sir; do you hear?)—­I would have made our name talked about.  So would Graveairs here have made something out of our name if he had represented it.  My Lord Graveairs would have done very well.  Yes, you have a very pretty way, and would have made a very decent, grave speaker.”  And here she began to imitate Esmond’s way of carrying himself and speaking to his face, and so ludicrously that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself could see there was some likeness in the fantastical malicious caricature.

“Yes,” says she, “I solemnly vow, own, and confess, that I want a good husband.  Where’s the harm of one?  My face is my fortune.  Who’ll come?—­buy, buy, buy!  I cannot toil, neither can I spin, but I can play twenty-three games on the cards.  I can dance the last dance, I can hunt the stag, and I think I could shoot flying.  I can talk as wicked as any woman of my years, and know enough stories to amuse a sulky husband for at least one thousand and one nights.  I have a pretty taste for dress, diamonds, gambling, and old China.  I love sugar-plums, Malines lace (that you brought me, cousin, is very pretty), the opera, and everything that is useless and costly.  I have got a monkey and a little black boy—­Pompey, sir, go and give a dish of chocolate to Colonel Graveairs,—­and a parrot and a spaniel, and I must have a husband.  Cupid, you hear?”

“Iss, Missis!” says Pompey, a little grinning negro Lord Peterborrow gave her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his mistress’s name on it.

“Iss, Missis!” says Beatrix, imitating the child.  “And if husband not come, Pompey must go fetch one.”

And Pompey went away grinning with his chocolate tray as Miss Beatrix ran up to her mother and ended her sally of mischief in her common way, with a kiss—­no wonder that upon paying such a penalty her fond judge pardoned her.