Page:Shirley (1849 Volume 3).djvu/87

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THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING.
75

"Take care, madam!"

"Scrupulous care I will take, Mr. Sympson. Before I marry, I am resolved to esteem—to admire—to love."

"Preposterous stuff!—indecorous!—unwomanly!"

"To love with my whole heart. I know I speak in an unknown tongue; but I feel indifferent whether I am comprehended or not."

"And if this love of yours should fall on a beggar?"

"On a beggar it will never fall. Mendicancy is not estimable."

"On a low clerk, a play-actor, a play-writer, or—or——"

"Take courage, Mr. Sympson! Or what?"

"Any literary scrub, or shabby, whining artist."

"For the scrubby, shabby, whining, I have no taste: for literature and the arts, I have. And there I wonder how your Fawthrop Wynne would suit me? He cannot write a note without orthographical errors; he reads only a sporting paper: he was the booby of Stilbro' grammar school!"

"Unladylike language! Great God!—to what will she come?" He lifted hands and eyes.

"Never to the altar of Hymen with Sam Wynne."

"To what will she come? Why are not the laws more stringent, that I might compel her to hear reason?"

"Console yourself, uncle. Were Britain a serfdom, and you the Czar, you could not compel me to