Shall I tell you my weakness? I
begin to love Frisk: it is the best-humoured impertinent thing in the
world: he is always too in waiting, and will certainly carry me off one
time or other. Freeland's father and mine have been upon treaty without
consulting me; and Cynthio has been eternally watching my eyes, without
approaching me, my friends, my maid, or any one about me: he hopes to
get me, I believe, as they say the rattlesnake does the squirrel, by
staring at me till I drop into his mouth. Freeland demands me for a
jointure which he thinks deserves me; Cynthio thinks nothing high enough
to be my value: Freeland therefore will take it for no obligation to
have me; and Cynthio's idea of me, is what will vanish by knowing me
better. Familiarity will equally turn the veneration of the one, and the
indifference of the other, into contempt. I will stick therefore to my
old maxim, to have that sort of man, who can have no greater views than
what are in my power to give him possession of. The utmost of my dear
Frisk's ambition is, to be thought a man of fashion; and therefore has
been so much in mode, as to resolve upon me, because the whole town
likes me.
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