Letter VII.

Miss Byron to Miss Selby.

Monday, March 20. After we had taken leave of one another for the night, I tapt at Emily’s chamber — door; which being immediately opened by her maid, Is it you, my dear Miss Byron, said she, running to me? How good this is!

I am come, my dear, late as it is, to pass an agreeable half-hour with you, if it will not be unseasonable.

That it can never be.

You must then let your Anne go to bed, said I: else, as her time is not her own, 1 shall shorten my visit. 1 will assist you in any little services myself. I have dismissed Jenny.

God bless you, madam, said she; you consider every-body. Anne tells me, that the servants, throughout the house, adore you: and I am sure their principals do Anne, youmay go to your rest.

Jenny, who attends me here, has more than once hinted to me, that Miss Jervois loves to sit up late, either reading, or being read to by Anne; who, though she reads well, is not fond of the task.

Servants, said I, are as sensible as their masters and mistresses — They speak to their feelings. I question not but they love Miss Jervois as well as they do me. 1 should as soon choose to take my measures of the goodness of principals by their ser-vants’ love of them, as by any other rule. Don’t you see, by the silent veneration and assiduities of the servants of Sir Charles Grandison, how much they adore their master?

I am very fond of being esteemed by servants, said she, from that very observation of my guardian’s goodness, and his servants’ worthiness, as well as from what my maid tells me all of them say of you. But you and my guardian are so much alike in every-thing, that you seem to be born for one another.

And then she sighed involuntarily; yet seemed not to endeavour to restrain or recal her sigh.

Why sighs my dear young friend? Why sighs my Emily?

That’s good of you, to call me your Emily. My guardian calls me his Emily. I am always proud when he calls me so I don’t know why I sigh: but I have lately got a trick of sighing, 1 think. Will it do me harm? Anne tells me it will; and says, I must bnak myself of it. She says, it is not pretty in a young lady to sigh: but where is the unprettiness of it?

Sighing is said to be a sign of bqjng in love; and young ladies

Ah! madam! and yet you sigh very often

I felt myself blush.

I often catch myself sighing, my dear, said I. It fs a tricky as you call it, which I would not have you learn.