Florentine received me not like a stranger, but as an old acquaintance; she was sorry I had felt it necessary to travel in so warm a day, and begged to know whether it was my pleasure to join the supper-table to which they had just sat down.
Surprised at the polished manner of the pretty girl, I offered her my arm, and while leading her into the dining-room whispered a good many fine speeches into her ear, to which she listened in such a manner as convinced me she had heard the same things often and much better told from others.
The landlord and landlady rose respectfully from their seats on my entrance, and a glance from Florentine directed the waiter to set a chair for me at her side.
Seated beside so charming a girl, who helped me herself to every thing I wanted, and talked of a thousand matters with equal ease and elegance, while her father and mother attended to the rest of their guests, I soon lost all appetite, but blessed my good fortune, as I gazed on the beautiful creature at my side, that I had not gone to the Golden Ox.
We talked of the capital, and I was flattering myself that I had painted the pleasures of life there in very attractive colours, but my eloquence seemed to be lost upon Florentine who spoke with raptures of a country life. I hinted that she might, perhaps, have drawn her notion of rural life from novels only; but she shook her lovely golden ringlets, and sighed as she remarked that she had spent the happiest days of her existence in the country. She had had, she said, the good fortune to have become acquainted with a very amiable person, Mrs Milbirnthe dear girl would have said more, but her rising feelings stifled her voice, and thus I had found out the sixth of the seven.
After the lapse of a few moments Florentine resumed the conversation, and soon spoke with such elegance and such affection of my dear departed grandmother, that I almost forgot, in the enthusiasm of my feelings, the part I was
