--And many a young body would hope to be the better for
her advice and experience, who now are afraid of affronting her, if
they suppose she has lived much longer in the world than themselves.
Then she looks back to the years she owns, when more flippant ladies,
at the laughing time of her life, delight to be frolic: she tries to
sing too, although, if ever she had a voice, she has outlived it; and
her songs are of so antique a date, that they would betray her; only,
as she says, they were learnt her by her grandmother, who was a fine
lady at the Restoration. She will join in a dance; and though her
limbs move not so pliantly as might be expected of a lady no older
than she would be thought, and whose dancing-days are not entirely
over, yet that was owing to a fall from her horse some years ago,
which, she doubts, she shall never recover, though she finds she grows
better and better, _every year_.
Thus she loses the respect, the reverence, she might receive, were it
not for this miserable affectation; takes pains, by aping youth, to
make herself unworthy of her years, and is content to be thought less
discreet than she might otherwise be deemed, for fear she should be
imagined older if she appeared wiser.
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