Lay long pleasantly entertaining myself with my wife, and then up
and to the office, where busy till noon, vexed to see how Sir J. Minnes
deserves rather to be pitied for his dotage and folly than employed at
a great salary to ruin the King's business. At noon to the 'Change, and
thence home to dinner, and then down to Deptford, where busy a while,
and then walking home it fell hard a raining. So at Halfway house put
in, and there meeting Mr. Stacy with some company of pretty women, I
took him aside to a room by ourselves, and there talked with him about
the several sorts of tarrs, and so by and by parted, and I walked home
and there late at the office, and so home to supper and to bed.
13th (Lord's day). Lay long in bed talking with my wife, and then up in
great doubt whether I should not go see Mr. Coventry or no, who hath
not been well these two or three days, but it being foul weather I staid
within, and so to my office, and there all the morning reading some
Common Law, to which I will allot a little time now and then, for I much
want it. At noon home to dinner, and then after some discourse with my
wife, to the office again, and by and by Sir W. Pen came to me after
sermon and walked with me in the garden and then one comes to tell me
that Anthony and Will Joyce were come to see me, so I in to them and
made mighty much of them, and very pleasant we were, and most of their
business I find to be to advise about getting some woman to attend my
brother Tom, whom they say is very ill and seems much to want one. To
which I agreed, and desired them to get their wives to enquire out one.
By and by they bid me good night, but immediately as they were gone out
of doors comes Mrs. Turner's boy with a note to me to tell me that my
brother Tom was so ill as they feared he would not long live, and that
it would be fit I should come and see him. So I sent for them back, and
they came, and Will Joyce desiring to speak with me alone I took him
up, and there he did plainly tell me to my great astonishment that my
brother is deadly ill, and that their chief business of coming was to
tell me so, and what is worst that his disease is the pox, which he hath
heretofore got, and hath not been cured, but is come to this, and that
this is certain, though a secret told his father Fenner by the Doctor
which he helped my brother to. This troubled me mightily, but however
I thought fit to go see him for speech of people's sake, and so walked
a
|