time, to exclaim with great rapture _"What sweet music!--" "Oh. how
charming!" "Did you ever hear any thing so delightful?--"_

"Ah," said Cecilia to Mr Gosport, who now approached her, "but for
your explanatory observations, how much would the sudden loquacity of
this supercilious lady, whom I had imagined all but dumb, have
perplext me!"

"Those who are most silent to strangers," answered Mr Gosport,
"commonly talk most fluently to their intimates, for they are deeply
in arrears, and eager to pay off their debts. Miss Leeson now is in
her proper set, and therefore appears in her natural character: and
the poor girl's joy in being able to utter all the nothings she has
painfully hoarded while separated from her coterie, gives to her now
the wild transport of a bird just let loose from a cage. I rejoice to
see the little creature at liberty, for what can be so melancholy as a
forced appearance of thinking, where there are no materials for such
an occupation?"

Soon after, Miss Larolles, who was laughing immoderately, contrived to
crowd herself into their party, calling out to them, "O you have had
the greatest loss in the world! if you had but been in the next room
just now!--there's the drollest figure there you can conceive: enough
to frighten one to look at him." And presently she added "O Lord, if
you stoop a little this way, you may see him!"

Then followed a general tittering, accompanied with exclamations of
"Lord, what a fright!" "It's enough to kill one with laughing to look
at him!" "Did you ever see such a horrid creature in your life?" And
soon after, one of them screamed out "O Lord, see!--he's grinning at