I have known some examples there, too, of good
husbands; and I believe these are not very plenty in England. Ask
me, rather, what I could expect when I married a fool; and I will tell
you a solemn truth; I did not know him to be so."- "Can no man," said
Sophia, in a very low and altered voice, "do you think, make a bad
husband, who is not a fool?" "That," answered the other, "is too
general a negative; but none, I believe, is so likely as a fool to
prove so. Among my acquaintance, the silliest fellows are the worst
husbands; and I will venture to assert, as a fact, that a man of sense
rarely behaves very ill to a wife who deserves very well."
Chapter 8
A dreadful alarm in the inn, with the arrival of an unexpected
friend of Mrs. Fitzpatrick
Sophia now, at the desire of her cousin, related- not what follows,
but what hath gone before in this history: for which reason the reader
will, I suppose, excuse me for not repeating it over again.
One remark, however, I cannot forbear making on her narrative,
namely, that she made no more mention of Jones, from the beginning
to the end, than if there had been no such person alive. This I will
neither endeavour to account for nor to excuse. Indeed, if this may be
called a kind of dishonesty, it seems the more inexcusable, from the
apparent openness and explicit sincerity of the other lady.- But so
it was.
Just as Sophia arrived at the conclusion of her story, there arrived
in the room where the two ladies were sitting a noise, not unlike,
in loudness, to that of a pack of hounds just let out from their
kennel; nor, in shrillness, to cats, when caterwauling; or to
screech owls; or, indeed, more like (for what animal can resemble a
human voice?) to those sounds which, in the pleasant mansions of
that gate which seems to derive its name from a duplicity of
tongues, issue from the mouths, and sometimes from the nostrils, of
those fair river nymphs, ycleped of old the Naiades; in the vulgar
tongue translated oyster-wenches; for when, instead of the antient
libations of milk and honey and oil, the rich distillation from the
juniper-berry, or, perhaps, from malt, hath, by the early devotion
of their votaries, been poured forth in great abundance, should any
daring tongue with unhallowed license prophane, i.
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