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“For Seward?” cried Sir Philip; “did she cry for Seward?  What a happy dog!  I hope she’ll never cry for me, for if she does, I won’t answer for the consequences!”

“Seward,” said Mrs. Thrale, “had affronted Johnson, and then Johnson affronted Seward, and then the S. S. cried.”

“Oh,” cried Sir Philip, “that I had but been here!”

“Nay,” answered Mrs. Thrale, “you’d only have seen how like three fools three sensible persons behaved:  for my part, I was quite sick of it, and of them too.”

Sir P.- But what did Seward do? was he not melted?

Mrs. T.-Not he; he was thinking only of his own affront, and taking fire at that.

Mr. S.-Why, yes, I did take fire, for I went and planted my back to it.

S.S.-And Mrs. Thrale kept stuffing me with toast-and-water.

Sir P.-But what did Seward do with himself?  Was not he in extacy?  What did he do or say?

Mr. S.-Oh, I said pho, pho, don’t let’s have any more of this,—­ it’s making it of too much consequence:  no more piping, pray.

Sir P.-Well, I have heard so much of these tears, that I would give the universe to have a sight of them.

Mrs. T.-Well, she shall cry again if you like it.

S.S.-No, pray, Mrs. Thrale.

Sir P.- Oh, pray, do ! pray let me see a little of it.

Mrs. T.-Yes, do cry a little, Sopby [in a wheedling voice], pray do!  Consider, now, you are going to-day, and it’s very hard if you won’t cry a little:  indeed, S. S., you ought to cry.

Now for the wonder of wonders.  When Mrs, Thrale, in a coaxing voice, suited to a nurse soothing a baby, had run on for some time,—­while all the rest of us, in laughter, joined in the request,—­two crystal tears came into the soft eyes of the

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S. S., and rolled gently down her cheeks!  Such a sight I never saw before, nor could I have believed.  She offered not to conceal ordissipate them:  on the contrary, she really contrived to have them seen by everybody.  She looked, indeed, uncommonly handsome; for her pretty face was not, like Chloe’s, blubbered; it was smooth and elegant, and neither her features nor complexion were at all ruffled; nay, indeed, she was smiling all the time.

“Look, look!” cried Mrs. Thrale; “see if the tears are not come already.”

Loud and rude bursts of laughter broke from us all at once.  How, indeed, could they be restrained?  Yet we all stared, and looked and re-looked again and again, twenty times, ere we could believe our eyes.  Sir Philip, I thought, would have died in convulsions; for his laughter and his politeness, struggling furiously with one another, made him almost black in the face.  Mr. Seward looked half vexed that her crying for him was now so much lowered in its flattery, yet grinned incessantly; Miss Thrale laughed as much as contempt would allow her:  but Dr. Delap seemed petrified with astonishment.