it is a great comfort persons of sensibility, like her and you, never in London can want subjects—what with the hackney-coach horses, and the cats left to starve to death in the areas of empty houses, to say nothing of donkeys unmercifully beaten."
"Yes, mamma, that is all very true and very shocking, but I was not thinking of them."
"No, madam, you were daring to think of a man—to be afraid for a man—to shudder and cry, for fear a sailor should be drowned! Don't you know that such fear is an act of positive indecency? What right, what possible pretension can any woman have to care for a man till she is actually married to him?—there is something in it so utterly repugnant to female delicacy, it absolutely shocks me."
"However," continued Lady Anne, "this nonsense must be put aside, at all events, for the present; as I shall muster a little party in honour of Lady Allerton's wedding, and I shall expect you to exert yourself very diligently in employments more calculated for Lady Anne Granard's daughter than crying for her fellow-creatures."
