Clarissa, Volume 2 | Page 8

might be able to get back again at night. So,
to-morrow I shall be at your devotion from day-light to day-light; nor
will I be at home to any body.
I have hinted before, that I could almost wish my mother and Mr.
Hickman would make a match of it: and I here repeat my wishes. What
signifies a difference of fifteen or twenty years; especially when the
lady has spirits that will make her young a long time, and the lover is a
mighty sober man?--I think, verily, I could like him better for a papa,
than for a nearer relation: and they are strange admirers of one another.
But allow me a perhaps still better (and, as to years, more suitable 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.
***
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,