xholes, of Letty
and Grizel, of Sedley and Bearwood, and Dick Ashbridge--at whose name
Prissy laughed saucily, and Fiddy bit her lips and frowned as fiercely
as she was able. With what penetration Mistress Betty read their
connections, and how blithely and tenderly she commented upon them!

Mistress Betty promised to send her young friends sets of silk for their
embroidery (and kept her word); she presented Prissy with her enamel
snuff-box, bearing an exact representation of that ugly building of St.
James's; and Fiddy with her "equipage"--scissors, tablets, and all,
chased and wreathed with tiny pastorals, shepherds reclining and piping
on sylvan banks, and shepherds and shepherdesses dancing on velvet
lawns.

Mistress Betty kissed the girls at parting, and wished them health,
peace, and good husbands; she held out her hand to Master Rowland, who
took it with a crimson cheek, and raised it to his lips: pshaw! she
never once looked at him.

The poor bachelor squire drove off, but for his manhood, groaning
inwardly. Lady Betty had acted, and caught not only her share of Master
Rowland's ticket, to which she was fairly entitled, but the cream of his
fancy and the core of his heart; with which she had no manner of
business, any more than with the State Papers and the Coronation-jewels.

IV.--MASTER ROWLAND GOES UP TO LONDON.

In the green-room of one of the great London theatres--David Garrick's,
perhaps--the stage company and their friends were waiting the call-boy
and the rising of the curtain.

As strange boards as any--as broad contrasts. Here a king, with his
crown cast down; there a beggar, with his wallet laid aside. But kings
and beggars are not affording the glaring discrepancies of Hogarth's
"Olympus in a Barn," but suggesting and preserving the distinctions far
below the buskins, the breastplate, the sandals, the symars. Here are
heroes, with the heroism only skin deep; and peers, like their Graces of
Bolton and Wharton, with less of the lofty, self-denying graces and the
ancient chivalry, than the most grovelling of ploughmen.

Among the crowd, Lady Betty is biding her time, very _nonchalant_, and a
little solitary in her state. Ladies who are independent, exclusive, and
inflexible, however admired and respected, are generally left to enjoy
their own opinions unmolested and at their leisure, whether behind the
stage curtain or elsewhere.

Just then a country gentleman, whose murrey coat has a certain