which I think to your advantage, and I expect your obedience; you know, your mother always obeyed me, and I will be master of my own family.' I really could hardly forbear laughing in his face; but as I thought that would be very unbecoming in me to my father, I turned the discourse as fast as possible. My sisters both fell out a-laughing; one cried, 'Oh! now we shall have fine diversion, Cynthia will be a charming mistress of a family. I wonder which of her books will teach her to be a housewife.'—'Yes,' says the other, 'undoubtedly her husband will be mightily pleased, when he wants his dinner, to find she has been all the morning diverting herself with reading, and forgot to order any; which I dare say will be the case,' I had now been so long used to them, that what they said, gave me no manner of concern, and I was seldom at the trouble of answering them.
"The next day my father brought a country gentleman home to dinner with him, who was a perfect stranger to me: I did not take much notice of him, for he had nothing remarkable in him; he was neither handsome nor ugly, tall nor short, old nor young; he had something, indeed, of a rusticity in his person; what he said, had nothing entertaining in it, either in a serious or merry way, and yet it was neither silly nor ridiculous. In short, I might be in company with a thousand such sort of men, and quite forget I had ever seen them: but I was greatly surprised after dinner, at my father's calling me out of the room, and telling me, that was the gentleman he designed for my husband; that he expected me to receive him as such, and he would take the first opportunity to leave us together, that my lover might explain himself. Which, as soon as he could contrive it, he did, by sending my sisters and cousin, one after another, out of the room, and then withdrawing himself. I had so ridiculous an idea
