Clarissa, Volume 2 | Page 8

and happier) disposal; for the man at least.--What think you, my dear, of compromising with your friends, by rejecting both men, and encouraging my parader?--If your liking one of the two go no farther than conditional, I believe it will do. A rich thought, if it obtain your approbation! In this light, I should have a prodigious respect for Mr. Hickman; more by half than I can have in the other. The vein is opened--Shall I let it flow? How difficult to withstand constitutional foibles!
Hickman is certainly a man more in your taste than any of those who have hitherto been brought to address you. He is mighty sober, mighty grave, and all that. Then you have told me, that he is your favourite. But that is because he is my mother's perhaps. The man would certainly rejoice at the transfer; or he must be a greater fool than I take him to be.
O but your fierce lover would knock him o' the head--I forgot that!-- What makes me incapable of seriousness when I write about Hickman?-- Yet the man so good a sort of man in the main!--But who is perfect? This is one of my foibles: and it is something for you to chide me for.
You believe me to be very happy in my prospect in relation to him: because you are so very unhappy in the foolish usage you meet with, you are apt (as I suspect) to think that tolerable which otherwise would be far from being so. I dare say, you would not, with all your grave airs, like him for yourself; except, being addressed by Solmes and him, you were obliged to have one of them.--I have given you a test. Let me see what you will say to it.
For my own part, I confess to you, that I have great exceptions to Hickman. He and wedlock never yet once entered into my head at one time. Shall I give you my free thoughts of him?--Of his best and his worst; and that as if I were writing to one who knows him not?--I think I will. Yet it is impossible I should do it gravely. The subject won't bear to be so treated in my opinion. We are not come so far as that yet, if ever we shall: and to do it in another strain, ill becomes my present real concern for you.
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Here I was interrupted on the honest man's account. He has been here these two hours--courting the mother for the daughter, I suppose--yet she wants no courting neither: 'Tis well one of us does; else the man would have nothing but halcyon; and be remiss, and saucy of course.
He was going. His horses at the door. My mother sent for me down, pretending to want to say something to me.
Something she said when I came that signified nothing--Evidently, for no reason called me, but to give me an opportunity to see what a fine bow her man could make; and that she might wish me a good night. She knows I am not over ready to oblige him with my company, if I happen to be otherwise engaged. I could not help an air a little upon the fretful, when I found she had nothing of moment to say to me, and when I saw her intention.
She smiled off the visible fretfulness, that the man might go away in good humour with himself.
He bowed to the ground, and would have taken my hand, his whip in the other. I did not like to be so companioned: I withdrew my hand, but touched his elbow with a motion, as if from his low bow I had supposed him falling, and would have helped him up--A sad slip, it might have been! said I.
A mad girl! smiled it off my mother.
He was quite put out; took his horse-bridle, stumped back, back, back, bowing, till he run against his servant. I laughed. He mounted his horse. I mounted up stairs, after a little lecture; and my head is so filled with him, that I must resume my intention, in hopes to divert you for a few moments.
Take it then--his best, and his worst, as I said before.
Hickman is a sort of fiddling, busy, yet, to borrow a word from you, unbusy man: has a great deal to do, and seems to me to dispatch nothing. Irresolute and changeable in every thing, but in teasing me with his nonsense; which yet, it is evident, he must continue upon my mother's interest more than upon his own hopes; for none have I given him.
Then I have a quarrel against his face, though in his person, for a well-thriven man, tolerably genteel--Not to his features so much neither; for what, as you have often observed, are