Waistcoats, and other articles of dress, were left to the
choice of the wearer, experience having proved that they are articles it is
impossible to legislate upon with any effect.
The old ladies, bless their disinterested hearts, alone looked on the hound
freak with other than feelings of approbation.
They thought it a pity he should take them. They wished he mightn't injure
himself--hounds were expensive things--led to habits of
irregularity--should be sorry to see such a nice young man as Mr. Waffles
led astray--not that it would make any difference to them, _but_--(looking
significantly at their daughters). No fox had been hunted by more hounds
than Waffles had been by the ladies; but though he had chatted and prattled
with fifty fair maids--any one of whom he might have found difficult to
resist, if 'pinned' single-handed by, in a country house, yet the
multiplicity of assailants completely neutralized each other, and verified
the truth of the adage that there is 'safety in a crowd.'
If pretty, lisping Miss Wordsworth thought she had shot an arrow home to
his heart over night, a fresh smile and dart from little Mary Ogleby's dark
eyes extracted it in the morning, and made him think of her till the
commanding figure and noble air of the Honourable Miss Letitia Amelia
Susannah Jemimah de Jenkins, in all the elegance of first-rate millinery
and dressmakership, drove her completely from his mind, to be in turn
displaced by some one more bewitching.
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