After he had thus baited his hook, and found easily enough the method
how to lay it in my way, he played an opener game; and one day, going
by his sister's chamber when I was there, doing something about
dressing her, he comes in with an air of gaiety. 'Oh, Mrs. Betty,'
said he to me, 'how do you do, Mrs. Betty? Don't your cheeks burn,
Mrs. Betty?' I made a curtsy and blushed, but said nothing. 'What
makes you talk so, brother?' says the lady. 'Why,' says he, 'we have
been talking of her below-stairs this half-hour.' 'Well,' says his
sister, 'you can say no harm of her, that I am sure, so 'tis no matter
what you have been talking about.' 'Nay,' says he, ''tis so far from
talking harm of her, that we have been talking a great deal of good,
and a great many fine things have been said of Mrs. Betty, I assure
you; and particularly, that she is the handsomest young woman in
Colchester; and, in short, they begin to toast her health in the town.' 'I wonder at you, brother,' says the sister. 'Betty wants but one
thing, but she had as good want everything, for the market is against
our sex just now; and if a young woman have beauty, birth, breeding,
wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all these to an extreme, yet if she
have not money, she's nobody, she had as good want them all for nothing
but money now recommends a woman; the men play the game all into their
own hands.' Her younger brother, who was by, cried, 'Hold, sister, you run too
fast; I am an exception to your rule. I assure you, if I find a woman
so accomplished as you talk of, I say, I assure you, I would not
trouble myself about the money.' 'Oh,' says the sister, 'but you will take care not to fancy one, then,
without the money.' 'You don't know that neither,' says the brother.
'But why, sister,' says the elder brother, 'why do you exclaim so at
the men for aiming so much at the fortune? You are none of them that
want a fortune, whatever else you want.' 'I understand you, brother,' replies the lady very smartly; 'you
suppose I have the money, and want the beauty; but as times go now, the
first will do without the last, so I have the better of my neighbours.' 'Well,' says the younger brother, 'but your neighbours, as you call
them, may be even with you, for beauty will steal a husband sometimes
in spite of money, and when the maid chances to be handsomer than the
mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a market, and rides in a coach
before her.' I thought it was time for me to withdraw and leave them, and I did so,
but not so far but that I heard all their discourse, in which I heard
abundance of the fine things said of myself, which served to prompt my
vanity, but, as I soon found, was not the way to increase my interest
in the family, for the sister and the younger brother fell grievously
out about it; and as he said some very disobliging things to her upon
my account, so I could easily see that she resented them by her future
conduct to me, which indeed was very unjust to me, for I had never had
the least thought of what she suspected as to her younger brother;
indeed, the elder brother, in his distant, remote way, had said a great
many things as in jest, which I had the folly to believe were in
earnest, or to flatter myself with the hopes of what I ought to have
supposed he never intended, and perhaps never thought of.