“Well, old Squire Nicholas, as they call him now, was as proud as Punch of his two fine daughters, and expected them to marry at least an earl apiece, by their faces and fine figures. And they went about with great folk in Town, and to Court, and all that sort of thing, looking fit to marry the King almost, in their velvets, and their satin furbelows. The eldest daughter was Arabella, our Miss Coldpepper to this day, and the other was Miss Monica; as fine a pair of women as the Lord ever made. But for all that, see what they come to! “There was no love lost between them even then, jealous of one another no doubt, like two cats over a fish-bone. Some said that one was the handsomer of them, and some said the other. There was a good bit of difference between them too, though any fool could tell they were sisters. Such eyes and noses as you won’t see now, and hair that would fall to their knees, I’ve been told, and complexions as clear as a white-heart cherry, and a cock of the chin, and a lordly walk—they deserved the name they went by in London, ‘the two Bright Suns of Sunbury.’ But after all, what good came of it? One is an old maid, and the other—well, not very likely to go to heaven, though she hasn’t had much of that yet on earth. Kit, I have seen a deal of women, as much as is good for any mortal man; and I tell you the first thing, and the second, and the third, and the whole to the end of the chapter of them depends upon their tempers. Ah, those two beauties were beauties at that; but Miss Monica ever so much the worse. “It seems that they both might have married very well, if it had not been for that stumbling-block. Many young women go on so soft, and eye you so pleasant, and blush so sweet, that you’d fancy almost there was no such thing as a cross word, or a spitfire look, or a puckered forehead in their constitution; and angels is the name for them, until it is too late to fly away. But these two Misses had never learned how to keep their tempers under for a week together; and it seems that they never cared enough for any one to try to do it. Till there came a man with a temper ten times as bad as both of theirs put together; and then they fell in love with him hot and hearty. This was a younger son of Lord Roarmore, a nobleman living in North Wales, or Ireland—I won’t be certain which—and he was known as the Honourable Tom Bulwrag. He used to drive the Windsor coach from London down to Hounslow; for the passengers could stand him, while the stones and air were noisy; but there he was forced to get down from the box; for nothing that lived, neither man, nor horse, nor cow in the ditch, could endure this gentleman’s language, when there was too much silence to hear it in.