gentle smile.
'You may laugh, gentlemen, if you please,' said Mrs. Atkinson; 'but I thank Heaven I have married a man who is not jealous of my understanding. I should have been the most miserable woman upon earth with a starched pedant who was possessed of that nonsensical opinion that the difference of sexes causes any difference in the mind. Why don't you honestly avow the Turkish notion that women have no souls? for you say the same thing in effect.'
'Indeed, my dear,' cries the serjeant, greatly concerned to see his wife so angry, 'you have mistaken the doctor.'
'I beg, my dear,' cried she, 'you will say nothing upon these subjects--I hope you at least do not despise my understanding.'
'I assure you, I do not,' said the serjeant; 'and I hope you will never despise mine; for a man may have some understanding, I hope, without learning.'
Mrs. Atkinson reddened extremely at these words; and the doctor, fearing he had gone too far, began to soften matters, in which Amelia assisted him. By these means, the storm rising in Mrs. Atkinson before was in some measure laid, at least suspended from bursting at present; but it fell afterwards upon the poor serjeant's head in a torrent, who had learned perhaps one maxim from his trade, that a cannon-ball always doth mischief in proportion to the resistance it meets with, and that nothing so effectually deadens its force as a woolpack. The serjeant therefore bore all with patience; and the idea of a woolpack, perhaps, bringing that of a feather-bed into his head, he at last not only quieted his wife, but she cried out with great sincerity, 'Well, my dear, I will say one thing for you, that I believe from my soul, though you have no learning, you have the best understanding of any man upon earth; and I must own I think the latter far the more profitable of the two.'
Far different was the idea she entertained of the doctor, whom, from this day, she considered as a conceited pedant; nor could all Amelia's endeavours ever alter her sentiments.
The doctor now took his leave of Booth and his wife for a week, he intending to set out within an hour or two with his old friend, with whom our readers were a little acquainted at the latter end of the ninth book, and of whom, perhaps, they did not then conceive the most favourable opinion.
Nay, I am aware that the esteem which some readers before had for the doctor may be here lessened; since he may appear to have been too easy a dupe to the gross flattery of the old gentleman. If there be any such critics, we are heartily sorry, as well for them as for the doctor; but it is our business to discharge the part of a faithful historian, and to describe human nature as it is, not as we would wish it to be.
Chapter 5
In Which Colonel Bath Appears In Great Glory
That afternoon, as Booth was walking in the Park, he met with Colonel Bath, who presently asked him for the letter which he had given him the night before; upon which Booth immediately returned it.
'Don't you think,' cries Bath, 'it is writ with great dignity of expression and emphasis of--of--of judgment?'
'I am surprized, though,' cries Booth, 'that any one should write such a letter to you, colonel.'
'To me!' said Bath. 'What do you mean, sir? I hope you don't imagine any man durst write such a letter to me? d--n me, if I knew a man who thought me capable of debauching my friend's wife, I would--d--n me.'
'I believe, indeed, sir,' cries Booth, 'that no man living dares put his name to such a letter; but you see it is anonymous.'
'I don't know what you mean by ominous,' cries the colonel; 'but, blast my reputation, if I had received such a letter, if I would not have searched the world to have found the writer. D--n me, I would have gone to the East Indies to have pulled off his nose.'
