eluded me, and escaped, nobody could see how.  Mr. Crutchley vowed I had caught and squeezed him to death in my hand.

“No, indeed,” cried I, “when I catch them, I put them out of the window.”

“Ay, their bodies,” said he, laughing; “but their legs, I suppose, you keep.”

“Not I, indeed; I hold them very safe in the palm of my hand.”

Oh!” said he, “the palm of your hand! why, it would not hold a fly!  But what have you done with the poor wretch! thrown him under the table slily?: 

“What good would that do?”

“Oh, help to establish your full character for mercy.”

Now was not that a speech to provoke Miss Grizzle herself?  However, I only made up a saucy lip.

“Come,” cried he, offering to take my hand, “where is he?  Which hand is he in?  Let me examine?”

“No, no, I thank you; I sha’n’t make you my confessor, whenever I take one.”

He did not much like this; but I did not mean he should.

Afterwards he told us a most unaccountably ridiculous story of a crying wife.  A gentleman, he said, of his acquaintance had married lately his own kept mistress; and last Sunday he had dined with the bride and bridegroom, but, to his utter astonishment, without any apparent reason in the world, in the middle of dinner or tea, she burst into a violent fit of crying, and went out of the room, though there was not the least quarrel, and the sposo seemed all fondness and attention.

“What, then,” said I, somewhat maliciously, I grant, “had you been saying to er?”

“Oh, thank you!” said he, with a half-affronted bow, “I expected this!  I declare I thought you would conclude it was me!”

ManagerHeliogabalus.

Somebody told me (but not your father) that the Opera singers would not be likely to get any money out of Sheridan This year.  “Why that fellow grows fat,” says I, “like Heliogabalus, upon the tongues of nightingales.”  Did I tell you that bright thing before?—­Mrs. Thrale to Fanny Burney. 224

Sisterauthoresses.

(Fanny Burney to Mrs. Philips, late Miss Susan Burney.) February, 1782.

As I have a frank and a subject, I will leave my bothers, and write you and my dear brother Molesworth(145) a little account of a rout I have just been at, at the house of Mr. Paradise.

You will wonder, perhaps, in this time of hurry, why I went thither ; but when I tell you Pacchierotti(146) was there, you will not think it surprising.

There was a crowd of company; Charlotte and I went together; my father came afterwards.  Mrs. Paradise received us very graciously, and led me immediately up to Miss Thrale, who was sitting by the Pac.

We were very late, for we had waited cruelly for the coach, and Pac. had sung a song out of “Artaxerxes,” composed for a tenor, which we lost, to my infinite regret.  Afterwards he sang “Dolce speme” delightfully.