Didactic fiction; Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
“When he returned to me then, as I was saying, with the casket, I
observed his eyes all over blubbered with tears. I rebuked him a little
too rashly on this occasion. ‘Heyday!’ says I, ‘what is the meaning of
this? I hope I have not a milk-sop with me. If I thought you would shew
such a face to the enemy I would leave you behind.’--‘Your honour need
not fear that,’ answered he; ‘I shall find nobody there that I shall
love well enough to make me cry.’ I was highly pleased with this answer,
in which I thought I could discover both sense and spirit. I then asked
him what had occasioned those tears since he had left me (for he had no
sign of any at that time), and whether he had seen his mother at Mrs.
Harris’s? He answered in the negative, and begged that I would ask him
no more questions; adding that he was not very apt to cry, and he hoped
he should never give me such another opportunity of blaming him. I
mention this only as an instance of his affection towards me; for I
never could account for those tears any otherwise than by placing them
to the account of that distress in which he left me at that time. We
travelled full forty miles that day without baiting, when, arriving at
the inn where I intended to rest that night, I retired immediately to
my chamber, with my dear Amelia’s casket, the opening of which was the
nicest repast, and to which every other hunger gave way.
“It is impossible to mention to you all the little matters with which
Amelia had furnished this casket. It contained medicines of all kinds,
which her mother, who was the Lady Bountiful of that country, had
supplied her with. The most valuable of all to me was a lock of her dear
hair, which I have from that time to this worn in my bosom. What would
I have then given for a little picture of my dear angel, which she had
lost from her chamber about a month before! and which we had the highest
reason in the world to imagine her sister had taken away; for the
suspicion lay only between her and Amelia’s maid, who was of all
creatures the honestest, and whom her mistress had often trusted with
things of much greater value; for the picture, which was set in gold,
and had two or three little diamonds round it, was worth about twelve
guineas only; whereas Amelia left jewels in her care of much greater
value.”
“Sure,” cries Miss Matthews, “she could not be such a paultry pilferer.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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