'
'Who would?' said Elizabeth; 'I am afraid I cannot tell you what he
thinks of your sense, but of this I am sure, that he must think you
the choicest damsel of his acquaintance, and wish his daughters were
more like you.'
'And there could not have been the same meaning in his eye when he
looked at you, as when he looked at Harriet,' said Helen.
'Oh no, I hope not,' said Anne.
'And you understood it a little better than one who can only feel
personal inconvenience,' said Elizabeth; 'but how can I blame Harriet
when I was the occasion of her fault? it is a thing I can never bear
to think of.'
As Elizabeth said this, they came to a shop where Anne wished to buy
some little presents for some children in the village at home, who,
she said, would value them all the more for not being the production
of the town nearest them. They pursued their search for gay remnants
of coloured prints, little shawls, and pictured pocket-handkerchiefs,
into the new town, and passed by Mr. Higgins's shop, the window of
which was adorned with all the worst caricatures which had found
their way to Abbeychurch, the portraits of sundry radical leaders,
embossed within a halo of steel-pens, and a notice of a lecture on
'Personal Respectability,' to be given on the ensuing Friday at the
Mechanics' Institute, by the Rev.
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