“Oh! My father told me you have come here with the intention of being agreeable. I hope you won’t be. I shall expect to be treated as a woman, not as an overgrown child, who is only happy when she is sucking sugar-candy. I have got some intellect, my father says, and I’ll trouble you to respect me.” This extraordinary speech she delivered with a most consummately grave face. Had I detected but the faintest twinkle in her eye, I should have made up my mind to treat the reception she was giving me as a joke, and enter into the spirit of her badinage, offensive as the taste was that could dictate it. But her gravity was not to be mistaken. Like the country girl of the play, she appeared to have neither tact nor breeding enough to restrain or moderate the violent and sudden exhibition of her character; and I sat listening to and watching her with much such mingled emotions of astonishment and disgust, as would no doubt possess me, were I compelled to make love to a female chimpanzee. I was spared the trouble of hunting after some suitable answer to her singular remarks by the entrance of her father. He came in, saying that he had been giving orders to the servants to hurry forward with the dinner, which was faithfully promised by five o’clock; and then going up to his daughter, he exclaimed: “Teazer, what on earth made you play Charlie so vile a trick? He tells me you fired a pistol at him! He will have to possess an uncommon share of good sense, not to suspect that he has been invited to a menagerie, if you don’t behave yourself.” “Pray say no more about it,” I exclaimed. Theresa fixed her shining eyes upon me, and I suspected, from the expression on her face, that she was going to “let out” at me in violent and powerful language. Instead of which she looked at her father, with a smile, and answered gently, “I thought all visits of state and ceremony were celebrated by discharges of artillery.” “Come, come, you were very wrong,” said her father, turning his head aside to conceal a grin. “I can only promise you Charlie’s forgiveness on one condition--that you will never be guilty of such folly again.” Once more I encountered her eyes fixed upon me, haughtily and angrily; and, anxious to conciliate her, I entreated my uncle to change the subject, assuring him that so far from being offended, I was only too pleased that Theresa should treat me _sans ceremonie_.