“Oh! by no means; don’t trouble yourself now, Lady Cecilia, for I hate regular introductions. But, as I was going to tell you how, before dinner to-day, as I came down the great staircase, I had an uncommon large, big, and, for aught I know, yellow corking-pin, which that most careless of all careless maids of mine--a good girl, too--had left sticking point foremost out of some part of me. Miss Hanley--Stanley (beg pardon) was behind, and luckily saw and stopped. Out she pulled it, begging my pardon; so kindly too, I only felt the twitch on my sleeve, and turned, and loved the first sight I had of that pretty face, which need never blush, I am sure, though it’s very becoming the blush too. So good-natured, you know, Lady Cecilia, it was, when nobody was looking, and before any body was the wiser. Not like some young ladies, or old even, that would have _showed one up_, rather than help one out in any pin’s point of a difficulty.” Lady Cecilia herself was included in Lady Bearcroft’s good graces, for she liked that winning way, and saw there was a real good-nature there, too. She opened to both friends cordially, _à propos_ to some _love_ of a lace trimming. Of lace she was a famous judge, and she went into details of her own good bargains, with histories of her expeditions into the extremity of the city in search of cheap goods and unheard of wonders at prime cost, in regions unknown. She told how it was her clever way to leave her carriage and her _people_, and go herself down narrow streets and alleys, where only wheel-barrows and herself could go; she boasted of her feats in diving into dark dens in search of run goods, charming things--French warranted--that could be had for next to nothing, and, in exemplification, showed the fineness of her embroidered cambric handkerchiefs, and told their price to farthing! Lady Masham’s “Wonderful!” was worthy of any Jesuit male or female, that ever existed.