counsel. He would see how his mother liked her; the play should be the
thing, and he would try his mother like Hamlet's.

Helen, in her good humour, asked Mr. Smirke to be of the party. That
ecclesiastic had been bred up by a fond parent at Clapham, who had an
objection to dramatic entertainments, and he had never yet seen a play.
But, Shakspeare!--but to go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and sit
a whole night by her side!--he could not resist the idea of so much
pleasure, and made a feeble speech, in which he spoke of temptation and
gratitude, and finally accepted Mrs. Pendennis's most kind offer. As he
spoke he gave her a look, which made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She
had seen that look more than once, of late, pursuing her. He became more
positively odious every day in the widow's eyes.

We are not going to say a great deal about Pen's courtship of Miss
Fotheringay, for the reader has already had a specimen of her
conversation, much of which need surely not be reported. Pen sate with
her hour after hour, and poured forth all his honest boyish soul to her.
Everything he knew, or hoped, or felt, or had read, or fancied, he told
to her. He never tired of talking and longing. One after another, as his
thoughts rose in his hot eager brain, he clothed them in words, and told
them to her. Her part of the tete-a-tete was not to talk, but to appear
as if she understood what Pen talked (a difficult matter, for the young
fellow blurted out no small quantity of nonsense), and to look
exceedingly handsome and sympathising. The fact is, whilst he was making
one of his tirades--and delighted, perhaps, and wondering at his own
eloquence, the lad would go on for twenty minutes at a time--the lovely
Emily, who could not comprehend a tenth part of his talk, had leisure to
think about her own affairs, and would arrange in her own mind how they
should dress the cold mutton, or how she would turn the black satin, or