When I awoke in the morning, I had a queer dread of having done something, I knew not what. “Surely I was far left to myself,” said I, “to be so overcome by wine, as to treat a decent, elderly gentlewoman with so little ceremony.” I was ready to sink through the floor.

“It was in fun: fun! a man of my years and prudence to do what my son would not have ventured; and if she makes a complaint? Shall I be carried before the magistrates? Who could have thought such would ever have happened to me? I, a man of the correctest of conduct—a moral neighbour, charitable, and all that.”—I was in despair.

“She spoke of marriage as the only compensation she would accept. Marriage, alas!—I had a foreboding she would somehow ensnare me; she has done it, and I am for life a miserable man. Mrs. Bell, the minister's wife, had bodily beauty; but mine—my bride's an atomy from the tomb.

“She may, however, cool, and be content with a lesser solacium, money—cannot I try her with money? any thing but marriage. A matter of money let it be, but no matrimony. No, no, of two evils let me choose the least: I would give half my fortune to squabash this joke. Oh! it is a black joke.

“Cannot I run away, abscond? the sun is but newly risen, a postchaise may soon be got ready. But whither can I fly? the shame will remain, or follow.

“Shame? there was no great shame in it, after all; it was just an after-dinner prank, a thing to be laughed at. I wonder what makes me so agitated; I must treat it lightly; I had a little wine in my head for the first time, and Miss Beeny had placed herself in a comical recumbency; I but just kittled her knee. It's a thing every body will laugh at.

“Laugh at!—but will they, will they laugh? will they not rather blazon the outrage, and deem it due to the offended laws?—Oh, impossible.”