ght be hinted to my
spouse; and looked still more bashfully. Her great fault, I must own,
was over-delicacy.

The Captain leered round him; and said, he believed he could guess from
the hints I had given him in town (of my over-love) and from what had now
passed, that we had not consummated our marriage.

O Jack! how sheepishly then looked, or endeavoured to look, thy friend!
how primly goody Moore! how affectedly Miss Rawlins!--while the honest
widow Bevis gazed around her fearless; and though only simpering with her
mouth, her eyes laughed outright, and seemed to challenge a laugh from
every eye in the company.

He observed, that I was a phoenix of a man, if so; and he could not but
hope that all matters would be happily accommodated in a day or two; and
that then he should have the pleasure to aver to her uncle, that he was
present, as he might say, on our wedding-day.

The women seemed all to join in the same hope.

Ah, Captain! Ah, Ladies! how happy should I be, if I could bring my dear
spouse to be of the same mind!

It would be a very happy conclusion of a very knotty affair, said the
widow Bevis; and I see not why we may not make this very night a merry
one.

The Captain superciliously smiled at me. He saw plainly enough, he said,
that we had been at children's play hitherto. A man of my character, who
could give way to such a caprice as this, must have a prodigious value
for his lady. But one thing he would venture to tell me; and that was
this--that, however desirous young skittish ladies might be to have their
way in this particular, it was a very bad setting-out for the man; as it
gave his bride a very high proof of the power she had over him: and he
would engage, that no woman, thus humoured, ever valued the man the more
for it; but very much the contrary--and there were reasons to be given
why she should not.

Well, well, Captain, no more of this subject before the ladies.--One
feels [shrugging my shoulders in a bashful try-to-blush manner] that one
is so ridiculous--I have been punished enough for my tender folly.

Miss Rawlins had taken her fan, and would needs hide her face behind it--
I suppose because her blush was not quite ready.

Mrs. Moore hemmed, and looked down; and by that gave her's over.

While the jolly widow, laughing out, praised the Captain as one of
Hudibras's metaphysicians, repeating,

He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly.