Her love of dirt gave way to an inclination for finery, and she grew clean as she grew smart; she had now the pleasure of sometimes hearing her father and mother remark on her personal improvement. "Catherine grows quite a good-looking girl--she is almost pretty today,"were words which caught her ears now and then;and how welcome were the sounds! To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.
Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children everything they ought to be;but her time was so much occupied in lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books--or at least books of information--for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all. But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine;she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.
From Pope, she learnt to censure those who "bear about the mockery of woe."From Gray, that "Many a flower is born to blush unseen, "And waste its fragrance on the desert air."From Thompson, that --"It is a delightful task "To teach the young idea how to shoot."And from Shakespeare she gained a great store of information--amongst the rest, that --"Trifles light as air, "Are, to the jealous, confirmation strong, "As proofs of Holy Writ."That "The poor beetle, which we tread upon, "In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great "As when a giant dies."And that a young woman in love always looks --"like Patience on a monument "Smiling at Grief."So far her improvement was sufficient--and in many other points she came on exceedingly well; for though she could not write sonnets, she brought herself to read them;and though there seemed no chance of her throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte, of her own composition, she could listen to other people's performance with very little fatigue. Her greatest deficiency was in the pencil--she had no notion of drawing--not enough even to attempt a sketch of her lover's profile, that she might be detected in the design.
There she fell miserably short of the true heroic height.
At present she did not know her own poverty, for she had no lover to portray. She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility, without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient. This was strange indeed! But strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out. There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no--not even a baronet.
There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door--not one young man whose origin was unknown.
Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her.
Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
Mr. Allen, who owned the chief of the property about Fullerton, the village in Wiltshire where the Morlands lived, was ordered to Bath for the benefit of a gouty constitution--and his lady, a good-humoured woman, fond of Miss Morland, and probably aware that if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad, invited her to go with them.
Mr. and Mrs. Morland were all compliance, and Catherine all happiness.