"It is the _oddest_ thing!" exclaimed Miss Fanshaw, who thought every thing _odd_ or _strange_ which she had not seen at Suxberry house. Without staying to observe the innumerable strokes of humour and of original genius in the print, she ran on--"La! its hardly worth any one's while, surely, to draw such a set of vulgar figures--one hates low humour." Then, in a hurry to show her taste for dress, she observed that "people, formerly, must have had no taste at all;--one can hardly believe such things were ever worn." Mrs. Fanshaw, touched by this reflection upon the taste of former times, though she seldom presumed to oppose any of her daughter's opinions, could not here refrain from saying a few words in defence of sacks, long waists, and whalebone stays, and she pointed to a row of stays in the margin of one of these prints of Hogarth. Miss Fanshaw, who did not consider that, with those who have a taste for propriety in manners, she could not gain any thing by a triumph over her mother, laughed in a disdainful manner at her mother's "_partiality for stays_," and _wondered_ how any body could think long waists becoming. "Surely, any body who knows any thing of drawing, or has any taste for an antique figure, must acknowledge the present fashion to be most graceful." She appealed to Isabella and Matilda. They were so much struck with the impropriety of her manner towards her mother, that they did not immediately answer; Matilda at length said, "It is natural to like what we have been early used to;" and, from unaffected gentleness, eager to prevent Miss Fanshaw from further exposing her ignorance, she rolled up the print; and Lady N----, smiling at Mrs. Harcourt, said, "I never saw a print more _gracefully_ rolled up in my life." Miss Fanshaw immediately rolled up another of the prints, but no applause ensued. At the next pause in the conversation, Mrs. Fanshaw and her daughter took their leave, seemingly dissatisfied with their visit. Matilda, just after Mrs. Fanshaw left the room, recollected her pretty netting-box, and asked Lady N---- whether she knew any thing of the little boy by whom it was made. Her ladyship gave such an interesting account of him, that Matilda determined to have her share in relieving his distress. Matilda's benevolence was formerly rather passive than active; but from Mad. de Rosier she had learned that sensibility should not be suffered to evaporate in sighs, or in sentimental speeches. She had also learnt that economy is necessary to generosity; and she consequently sometimes denied herself the gratification of her own tastes, that she might be able to assist those who were in distress.