All this time Lucilla sat listening with a smile, behind the complacency of which she tried to conceal her astonishment. Ph[oe]be, who had less self-control, was on the very verge of a broad laugh. Sir John, who had long lived in a soil where this species is indigenous, had been too long accustomed to all its varieties to feel much astonishment at this specimen, which, however, he sat contemplating with philosophical but discriminating coolness. For my own part, my mind was wholly absorbed in contrasting the coarse manners of this voluble and intrepid, but good-humored girl, with the quiet, cheerful, and unassuming elegance of Lucilla. "I should be afraid, Miss Rattle," said Mr. Stanley, "if you did not look in such blooming health, that, with all these incessant labors, you did not allow yourself time for rest. Surely you never sleep?" "O yes, that I do, and eat too," said she; "my life is not quite so hard and moping as you fancy. What between shopping and morning visits with mamma, and seeing sights, and the park, and the gardens (which, by the way, I hate, except on a Sunday when they are crowded), and our young balls, which are four or five in a week after Easter, and mamma's music parties at home, I contrive to enjoy myself tolerably, though after I have been presented, I shall be a thousand times better off, for then I sha'n't have a moment to myself. Won't that be delightful?" said she, twitching my arm rather roughly, by way of recalling my attention, which, however, had seldom wandered. As she had now run out her London materials, the news of the neighborhood next furnished a subject for her volubility. After she had mentioned in detail one or two stories of low village gossip, while I was wondering how she could come at them, she struck me dumb by quoting the coachman as her authority. This enigma was soon explained. The mother and daughter having exhausted their different topics of discourse nearly at the same time, they took their leave, in order to enrich every family in the neighborhood, on whom they were going to call, with the same valuable knowledge which they had imparted to us. Mr. Stanley conducted Lady Rattle, and I led her daughter; but as I offered to hand her into the carriage she started back with a sprightly motion, and screamed out, "O no, not in the inside, pray help me up to the _dickey_; I always protest I never _will_ ride with any body but the coachman, if we go ever so far." So saying, with a spring which showed how much she despised my assistance, the little hoyden was seated in a moment, nodding familiarly at me as if I had been an old friend. Then with a voice, emulating that which, when passing by Charing Cross, I have heard issue from an over-stuffed vehicle, when a robust sailor has thrust his body out at the window, the fair creature vociferated, "Drive on, coachman!" He obeyed, and turning round her whole person, she continued nodding at me till they were out of sight.