“You seem to have been at so many sights,” Captain Fane said, “that there are only one or two left for you to see, but as you have gone hitherto with the multitude, I should not wonder though you have, without any blame to your judgments, of course, missed some choice exhibitions.” He addressed Lady Sundon at her fringe-loom and the young ladies at their tambour-frames. “Now what may they be, Harry? We shall be vastly obliged to you for enlightening us.” Her ladyship was open to a suggestion. “There are the exhibitions of Mr. Boulton’s new coins, medals, and machinery; and there is the show of the new Staffordshire ware which men of science and taste are flocking to.” “Dear heart alive, are we men of science?” remonstrated Lady Sundon; “we’ve been to Cox’s museum, where an artificial bird sings, and to the place kept by the Swiss in King Street, Covent Garden, where the effigy of a boy writes, and the effigy of a girl draws, and another effigy of a young lady—the marrow of Lyddy there—plays the piano; and that is enough science for me, if indeed, it ain’t the black art, which it is uncommonly like. I thought you were going to tell of a fresh batch of wild Indians, with their paint and war-dances; or of the last caught syren, with her gills serving as curls, and a fin rising on the top of her head for that matter instead of our present fashionable ‘heads’—odd! ain’t it, that the syrens should have the fashions at the bottom of the sea?—or of a new fortune-teller.” “What could put all these foolish things into your head, my lady?” complained Captain Fane. “‘These are the least the man can have in his eye,’ I said to myself,” she told him for her explanation. “I am extraordinary disappointed. No, sir; you are a clever dog in your way, and not a bad dog at bottom, since your bark is worse than your bite, though you have a little of the bulldog in you too when your temper is fairly roused, but you have no notion how to please and divert ladies, that’s clear.” “Very likely I have not,” answered Captain Fane a little glumly, “but sure I did you no disparagement when I evened you to what delights men of parts.” “No, indeed, Captain Fane,” spoke up Lady Bell, her natural and high-bred sweetness in a ferment at the reception which had been accorded even by good-natured Lady Sundon to the young sailor’s overture, which was a little too affable in its tone, perhaps, but was obliging and kindly meant. Farther Lady Bell hated to think that Captain Fane would suppose women in general, and she in particular, had not minds above the vulgar marvels which Lady Sundon had quoted.