"By Jove, how they made you cry out!" said Joe, caught by the
ridicule of the circumstance, and exploding in a fit of laughter
which ended quite suddenly, as usual.

"I shall take care how I let YOU choose for me another time," said
Rebecca, as they went down again to dinner. "I didn't think men
were fond of putting poor harmless girls to pain."

"By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn't hurt you for the world."

"No," said she, "I KNOW you wouldn't"; and then she gave him ever so
gentle a pressure with her little hand, and drew it back quite
frightened, and looked first for one instant in his face, and then
down at the carpet-rods; and I am not prepared to say that Joe's
heart did not thump at this little involuntary, timid, gentle motion
of regard on the part of the simple girl.

It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies of indisputable
correctness and gentility will condemn the action as immodest; but,
you see, poor dear Rebecca had all this work to do for herself. If
a person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he
must sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma to settle
matters with the young man, she must do it for herself. And oh,
what a mercy it is that these women do not exercise their powers
oftener! We can't resist them, if they do. Let them show ever so
little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once: old or
ugly, it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive truth.
A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may
marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are
like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They