"But that reminds me that I had my choice; and I chose like the man who put the broom across the walk. I might have had beauty; I might have had fashion; I might have had wit, though I hate it in a girl, because they soon give you the worst of it. And I might have had noble birth; but that would never do, because she might be nasty about the forks and spoons, at the height of the most festive enterprise. She was very sweet upon me for as much as three days; and my aunt, who has £80,000 to leave, was wild to have a Lady Frances Erricker. But my Lady Fanny made a wicked slip about the new process, that the Governor has given five pounds for, and expects to clear five thousand by it; and it was all over with her chance. She repented with many tears, and I forgave her, but could not see my way to put her on again; for her outside value was about a thou.; and she would cost more per ann. than that to keep. "Well, I was just putting on my blinkers for another trot in single harness, when a little thing comes round my nose, and looks at me, and strokes my ears, and, by Jove, it was all up with me. Oh, she is such a little Venus, George! Small, as all the true sort are; but no mistake about her. Every time you look at her, you say to yourself--This is a girl; not an Amazon, nor an owl, nor an owl-faced Athenè, nor even the one who changed her sex, every time she struck a serpent. I may be wrong about that; never mind, my Loo will never want to be a Louis. In plain unvarnished fact, she is a duck, and that is what you want of them. Swans are not for me, nor eagles, least of all a cormorant. Her sweet name is Louisa Box; and I said a pretty thing to her. You know my little knack that way. I said, 'Loo Box, you have boxed my compass, and fetched it all to looward.' She could not quite take in my point, for no girl ever knows north from south; but she said, 'Oh, Tom, you are so clever!' while some of them would have boxed my ears; and Lady Fanny longed to do it.