CHAPTER EIGHT.
ONLY ABOUT A LITTLE BIRD.
Oh! let them ne'er, with artificial note, To please a tyrant, strain their little bill; But sing what heaven inspires, and wander where they will! I was ten times angrier with myself when I got home.
What a fool I had been--what an idiot--to have thrown away my chances as I had done! I had wished for "the roc's egg" to complete my happiness; and I had obtained it with a vengeance.
My roc's egg had been the "open sesame" to Mrs Clyde's castle.

I had sighed for it, striven for it, gained it at last; and, a fine mess I had made of it, all things considered! What must she think me?
An ill-bred, untutored, unlicked cub, most probably! I did not let myself off easily, I promise you.

My conscience gave it to me well, and I could find no satisfactory terms in which I could express my opinion of my own surly behaviour.
I think if some people only knew the bitter pangs that social culprits afterwards experience within themselves for their slips and slidings by the way, they would be less harsh in their judgments and unsparing in their condemnation than they usually are.

Sending him to Coventry is a poor punishment in comparison with the offender's own remorse.

He finds the "labor et opus redintegrare gradum" hard enough, without that Rhadamanthus, "society," making the ascent slippery for him! As I recalled the incidents of the evening, I could not help allowing to my conscience that Mr Mawley the curate, whom I disliked, had shown himself a gentleman, where I had only acted like a snob; while Horner, a man whom I, in my conceit, had looked down upon and affected to despise as an empty-headed fop and nonentity, was a prince beside me! They had but played their respective social parts, and accepted the gifts that the gods provided; while I--dunder-headed dolt that I was-- had conducted myself worse than a budding school-boy who had but just donned swallow-tails, and made his first entry into society! Jealousy had been the cause of it all, of course; but, although I have always held, and will continue to believe, that the presence of that "green-eyed monster," as the passion is euphuistically termed, is inseparable from all cases of real, thorough, heart-felt, engrossing love--still, jealousy is no excuse for ill-manners.