To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.
Silleri, Sept. 29, 10 o'clock.
O to be sure! we are vastly to be pitied: no beaux at all with the
general; only about six to one; a very pretty proportion, and what I
hope always to see. We, the ladies I mean, drink chocolate with the
general to-morrow, and he gives us a ball on Thursday; you would not
know Quebec again; nothing but smiling faces now; all so gay as never
was, the sweetest country in the world; never expect to see me in
England again; one is really somebody here: I have been asked to dance
by only twenty-seven.
On the subject of dancing, I am, as it were, a little embarrassed:
you will please to observe that, in the time of scarcity, when all the
men were at Montreal, I suffered a foolish little captain to sigh and
say civil things to me, _pour passer le tems_, and the creature
takes the airs of a lover, to which he has not the least pretensions,
and chuses to be angry that I won't dance with him on Thursday, and I
positively won't.
It is really pretty enough that every absurd animal, who takes upon
him to make love to one, is to fancy himself entitled to a return: I
have no patience with the men's ridiculousness: have you, Lucy?
But I see a ship coming down under full sail; it may be Emily and
her friends: the colours are all out, they slacken sail; they drop
anchor opposite the house; 'tis certainly them; I must fly to the
beach: music as I am a person, and an awning on the deck: the boat puts
off with your brother in it. Adieu for a moment: I must go and invite
them on shore.