Fanny J---- once laid a wager with me that she would make him bow. She
contrived a plan to meet him as he returned from the Square. I hid
behind the stone wall, and peeped through the chinks. Just as they met,
she almost let the wind blow her bonnet off, hoping to catch his eye.
But he looked so straight forward into the distance that I was alarmed,
thinking there might be a loose horse coming, or a house afire. That was
in the first of my staying there. We were afterwards great friends. He
liked me, because I was good to the old folks, and to Emily,--and had a
sort of respect for me, because I was the oldest, and because I could
talk, and because of the great thick books in my room. I respected him,
because I had seen the world and its shams, and knew him to be good all
the way through, and because he couldn't talk, and also, perhaps,
because he was so much bigger and handsomer than I. In fact, I should
have felt quite downhearted about my own looks, if I hadn't learned from
books--not the thick ones--that sallow-looking men, with dark eyes, are
interesting.
David's mother approved of steady habits, but for all that she would
rather have had him waste some of his time, and be like the rest of his
kind.
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