Now I think of it, why did you not write to your brother? Did you
chuse me to expose my ignorance? If so, I flatter myself you are a
little taken in, for I think John and I figure in the rural way.



LETTER 23.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Silleri, Sept. 29, 10 o'clock.

O to be sure! we are vastly to be pitied: no beaux at all with the
general; only about six to one; a very pretty proportion, and what I
hope always to see. We, the ladies I mean, drink chocolate with the
general to-morrow, and he gives us a ball on Thursday; you would not
know Quebec again; nothing but smiling faces now; all so gay as never
was, the sweetest country in the world; never expect to see me in
England again; one is really somebody here: I have been asked to dance
by only twenty-seven.

On the subject of dancing, I am, as it were, a little embarrassed:
you will please to observe that, in the time of scarcity, when all the
men were at Montreal, I suffered a foolish little captain to sigh and
say civil things to me, _pour passer le tems_, and the creature
takes the airs of a lover, to which he has not the least pretensions,
and chuses to be angry that I won't dance with him on Thursday, and I
positively won't.