On the other hand, my stepfather professed to be scandalised by my conduct. He marched into my room one day, after I had spent the night alone at Gravesend, and asked leave to have a serious talk with me. But, on his beginning to tell me that I was not acting with that sort of decorum, with that regard to social observances, which is always expected and looked for in a young lady, I walked out of the room. He then addressed a long letter to me. His drift was still decorum and social observances, and what would his patients think. _I_ thought of my father and how _he_ would deal with this fellow, who was daring enough to teach me how to conduct myself, and in a passion I tore the letter in halves, slipped the pieces into an envelope, on which I wrote, ‘Your advice is as objectionable as your company,’ and bade my maid put the letter on the table of the room in which he received his patients. But this is not telling you whether I had lovers, sweethearts, followers, or not. I have no room to go into that matter here; yet, let me name two young gentlemen. The first was the son of one of my trustees, Captain Galloway, who lived at Shadwell. The youth was good-looking, and had a pleasant, easy manner; he had been well educated, and at this time held some post of small consequence in the London Docks. He hung about me much, contrived to meet me at friends’ houses, often called, and managed sometimes to discover whither I had gone on a ramble, and to meet me as though by accident. I never doubted that I owed a good deal of this lad’s attention to old Captain Galloway’s fatherly advice. I laughed in my sleeve at the poor boy, though I was always gentle and kind to him; and if I never gave him any marked encouragement, for his father’s sake I took care never to pain or in any way disconcert him; until one evening, happening to be at a quadrille party, to which he had been invited, though he did not attend, a pretty, sad-faced young creature was pointed out to me as a girl whom Jim Galloway had jilted so provokingly as to earn him a caning at the hands of the young lady’s brother. This was enough for me. I first made sure that the story was true, and when next I met my youthful admirer I took him on one side, and, having told him what I had heard, informed him that he was a wicked, dangerous boy, unfit for the society of ladies, and, affecting a great air of indignation, I asked if by his hanging about me he did not intend to make a fool of me too. What passed put an end to the young gentleman’s addresses; but I always regret that this affair should have occasioned a coolness between Captain Galloway and myself.