"
"You have all the amusing ways of your sex, my dear Pamela. But tell
me what you would say? You know I don't love suspense."
"May-be you're busy. Sir. Perhaps I break in upon you. I believe you
were going into your closet."
"True woman!--How you love to put one upon the tenters! Yet, my life
for yours, by your parade, what I just now thought important, is some
pretty trifle!--Speak it at once, or I'll be angry with you;" and
tapped my cheek.
"Well, I wish I had not come just now!--I see you are not in a
good humour enough for my proposal.--So, pray, Sir, excuse me till
to-morrow."
He took my hand, and led me to his closet, calling me his pretty
impertinent; and then urging me, I said, "You know, Sir, I have not
been used to the company of children. Your dear Billy will not make me
fit, for a long time, to judge of any part of education. I can learn
of the charming boy nothing but the baby conduct: but now, if I might
take into the house some little Master of three or four years old, or
Miss of five or six, I should watch over all their little ways; and
now reading a chapter in the _child_, and now one in the _book_, I can
look forward, and with advantage, into the subject; and go through all
the parts of education tolerably, for one of my capacity; for, Sir,
I can, by my own defects, and what I have wished to mend, know how
to judge of, and supply that part of life which carries a child up to
eleven or twelve years of age, which was mine, when my lady took me.
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