I felt about the bed as if I sought for something that I
grasp'd in my waking dream, and not finding it, could have
cry'd for vexation; every part of me glowing with stimul-
ating fires. At length, I resorted to the only present
remedy, that of vain attempts at digitation, where the
smallness of the theatre did not yet afford room enough for
action, and where the pain my fingers gave me, in striving
for admission, tho' they procured me a slight satisfaction
for the present, started an apprehension, which I could not
be easy till I had communicated to Phoebe, and received her
explanations upon it.
The opportunity, however, did not offer till next
morning, for Phoebe did not come to bed till long after
I was gone to sleep. As soon then as we were both awake,
it was but in course to bring our ly-a-bed chat to land on
the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the
love scene I had thus, by chance, been spectatress of,
serv'd for a preface.
Phoebe could not hear it to the end without more than
one interruption by peals of laughter, and my ingenuous way
of relating matters did not a little heighten the joke to
her.
But, on her sounding me how the sight had affected me,
without mincing or hiding the pleasurable emotions it had
inspir'd me with, I told her at the same time that one re-
mark had perplex'd me, and that very considerably.
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