“Ah, Miss Burney,” she says continually, “if you knew Sophy, you would never bear me! she is so much better than I am, and so handsome, and so good, and so clever,-and I used to talk to her of you by the hour together.  She longs so to know you!  ‘Come,’ she says, ’now tell me something more about your darling, Miss Burney.’  But I ought to hope you may never see her, for if you did I should be so jealous.”

Mr. Henry will be so mortified.”

Friday was a busy and comical day.  We had an engagement of long standing, to drink tea with Miss L-, whither we all went, and a most queer evening did we spend.

When we entered, she and all her company were looking out of the window; however, she found us out in a few minutes, and made us welcome in a strain of delight and humbleness at receiving us, that put her into a flutter of spirits, from which she never recovered all the evening.

Her fat, jolly mother took her seat at the top of the room; next to her sat a lady in a riding habit, whom I soon found to be Mrs. Dobson;(120) below her sat a gentlewoman, prim, upright, neat, and mean; and, next to her, sat another, thin, haggard, wrinkled, fine, and tawdry, with a thousand frippery ornaments and old-fashioned furbelows; she was excellently nick-named, by Mrs. Thrale, the Duchess of Monmouth.  On the opposite side was placed Mrs. Thrale, and, next to her, Queeny.  For my own part, little liking the appearance of the set, and half dreading Mrs. Dobson, from whose notice I wished to escape, I had made up myself to one of the now deserted windows, and Mr. Thrale had followed me.  As to Miss L-, she came to stand by me, and her panic, I fancy, returned, for she seemed quite panting with a desire to say something, and an incapacity to utter it.

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It proved happy for me that I had taken this place, for in a few minutes the mean, neat woman, whose name was Aubrey, asked if Miss Thrale was Miss Thrale?

“Yes, ma’am.”

 “And pray, ma’am, who is that other young lady?” "

A daughter of Dr. Burney’s, ma’am.”

“What!” cried Mrs. Dobson, “is that the lady that has favoured us with that excellent novel?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

.Then burst forth a whole volley from all at once.  “Very extraordinary, indeed!” said one;—­“Dear heart, who’d have thought it?” said another,—­“I never saw the like in my life!” said a third.  And Mrs. Dobson, entering more into detail, began praising it through, but chiefly Evelina herself, which she said was the most natural character she had ever met in any book.

Mr. and Mrs. Whalley now arrived, and I was obliged to go to a chair-when such staring followed; they could not have opened their eyes wider when they first looked at the Guildhall giants!  I looked with all the gravity and demureness possible, in order to keep them from coming plump to the subject again, and, indeed this, for a while, kept them off.