My mother presented me to her ladyship. The ceremony of introduction between a young gentleman and an old lady of those times, performed on his part with a low bow and look of profound deference, on hers, with back stepping-curtsy and bridled head, was very different from the nodding, bobbing trick of the present day. As soon as the _finale_ of Lady de Brantefield’s sentence, touching honour, happiness, and family connexion, would permit, I receded, and turned from the mother to the daughter, little Lady Anne Mowbray, a light fantastic figure, bedecked with “daisies pied,” covered with a profusion of tiny French flowers, whose invisible wire stalks kept in perpetual motion as she turned her pretty head from side to side. Smiling, sighing, tittering, flirting with the officers round her, Lady Anne appeared, and seemed as if she delighted in appearing, as perfect a contrast as possible to her august and formidable mother. The daughter had seen the ill effect of the mother’s haughty demeanour, and, mistaking reverse of wrong for right, had given reserve and dignity to the winds. Taught by the happy example of Colonel Topham, who preceded me, I learned that the low bow would have been here quite out of place. The sliding bow was for Lady Anne, and the way was to dash into nonsense with her directly, and full into the midst of nonsense I dashed. Though her ladyship’s perfect accessibility seemed to promise prompt reply to any question that could be asked; yet the single one about which I felt any curiosity, I could not contrive to introduce during the first three hours I was in her ladyship’s company. There was such a quantity of preliminary nonsense to get through, and so many previous questions to be disposed of: for example, I was first to decide which of three colours I preferred, all of them pronounced to be the _prettiest_ in, the universe, _boue de Paris, oeil de l’empereur_, and a _suppressed sigh_. At that moment, Lady Anne wore the _suppressed sigh_, but I did not know it--I mistook it for _boue de Paris_--conceive my ignorance! No two things in nature, not a horse-chestnut and a chestnut-horse, could be more different. Conceive my confusion! and Colonels Topham and Beauclerk standing by. But I recovered myself in public opinion, by admiring the slipper on her ladyship’s little foot. Now I showed my taste, for this slipper had but the night before arrived express from Paris, and it was called a _venez-y voir_; and how a slipper, with a heel so high, and a quarter so low, could be kept on the foot, or how the fair could walk in it, I could not conceive, except by the special care of her guardian sylph. After the _venez-y voir_ had fixed all eyes as desired, the lady turning alternately to Colonels Topham and Beauclerk, with rapid gestures of ecstasy, exclaimed, “The _pouf!_ the _pouf!_ Oh! on Wednesday I shall have the _pouf_!”