Too late, too late to begin, Harriet. I won't take it of him now. He
has never let me see that his face can become two sorts of features. The
poor man can look sorrowful; that I know full well: but I shall always
laugh when he attempts to look angry.
You know better, Charlotte. You may give him so much cause for anger,
that you may make it habitual to him, and then would be glad to see him
pleased. Men have an hundred ways that women have not to divert
themselves abroad, when they cannot be happy at home. This I have heard
observed by--
By your grandmother, Harriet? Good old lady! In her reign it might be
so; but you will find, that women now have as many ways to divert
themselves abroad as the men. Have you not observed this yourself in one
of your letters to Lucy? Ah! my dear! we can every hour of the
twenty-four be up with our monarchs, if they are undutiful.
But Charlotte Grandison will not, cannot--
Why that's true, my dear--But I shall not then be a Grandison. Yet the
man will have some security from my brother's goodness. He is not only
good himself, but he makes every one related to him, either from fear or
shame, good likewise. But I think that when one week or fortnight is
happily over, and my spirits are got up again from the depression into
which this abominable hurry puts them, I could fall upon some inventions
that would make every-one laugh, except the person who might take it into
his head that he may be a sufferer by them: and who can laugh, and be
angry, in the same moment?
You should not marry, Charlotte, till this wicked vein of humour and
raillery is stopt.
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