LETTER XXVIII MR. LOVELACE [IN CONTINUATION.]
Well, well, Captain, no more of this subject before the ladies.--One feels [shrugging my shoulders in a bashful try-to-blush manner] that one is so ridiculous--I have been punished enough for my tender folly.
Miss Rawlins had taken her fan, and would needs hide her face behind it-- I suppose because her blush was not quite ready.
Mrs. Moore hemmed, and looked down; and by that gave her's over.
While the jolly widow, laughing out, praised the Captain as one of Hudibras's metaphysicians, repeating,
He knew what's what, and that's as high As metaphysic wit can fly.
This made Miss Rawlins blush indeed:--Fie, fie, Mrs. Bevis! cried she, unwilling, I suppose, to be thought absolutely ignorant.
Upon the whole, I began to think that I had not made a bad exchange of our professing mother, for the unprofessing Mrs. Moore. And indeed the women and I, and my beloved too, all mean the same thing: we only differ about the manner of coming at the proposed end.