und Annette, a
chalk-block for her chair, and a mound of chalk-rubble defending her from
the keen-tipped breath of the east, now and then shadowing the smooth
blue water, faintly, like reflections of a flight of gulls.

Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies? Those who
write of their perplexities in descriptions comical in their length are
unkind to them, by making them appear the simplest of the creatures of
fiction; and most of us, I am sure, would incline to believe in them if
they were only some bit more lightly touched. Those troubled sentiments
of our young lady of the comfortable classes are quite worthy of mention.
Her poor little eye poring as little fishlike as possible upon the
intricate, which she takes for the infinite, has its place in our
history, nor should we any of us miss the pathos of it were it not that
so large a space is claimed for the exposure. As it is, one has almost to
fight a battle to persuade the world that she has downright thoughts and
feelings, and really a superhuman delicacy is required in presenting her
that she may be credible. Even then--so much being accomplished the
thousands accustomed to chapters of her when she is in the situation of
Annette will be disappointed by short sentences, just as of old the
Continental eater of oysters would have been offended at the offer of an
exchange of two live for two dozen dead ones. Annette was in the grand
crucial position of English imaginative prose. I recognize it, and that
to this the streamlets flow, thence pours the flood. But what was the
plain truth? She had brought herself to think she ought to sacrifice
herself to Tinman, and her evasions with Herbert, manifested in tricks of
coldness alternating with tones of regret, ended, as they had commenced,
in a mysterious half-sullenness. She had hardly a word to say. Let me
step in again to observe that she had at the moment no pointed intention
of marrying Tinman. To her mind the circumstances compelled her to embark
on the idea of doing so, and she saw the extremity in an extreme
distance, as those who are taking voyages may see death by drowning.
Still she had embarked.

"At all events, I have your word for it that you don't dislike me?" said
Herbert.

"Oh! no," she sighed. She liked him as emigrants the land they are
leaving.

"And you have not promised your hand?"

"No," she said, but sighed in thinking that if she could be induced to
promise it, there wo