ster's,
about some things more to buy, and so to see our coach, and so to the
looking-glass man's, by the New Exchange, and so to buy a picture for
our blue chamber chimney, and so home; and there I made my boy to read
to me most of the night, to get through the Life of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. At supper comes Mary Batelier, and with us all the evening,
prettily talking, and very innocent company she is; and she gone, we
with much content to bed, and to sleep, with mighty rest all night.

24th. Up, and at the Office all the morning, and at noon home to dinner,
where Mr. Gentleman, the cook, and an old woman, his third or fourth
wife, come and dined with us, to enquire about a ticket of his son's,
that is dead; and after dinner, I with Mr. Hosier to my closet, to
discourse of the business of balancing Storekeeper's accounts, which
he hath taken great pains in reducing to a method, to my great
satisfaction; and I shall be glad both for the King's sake and his, that
the thing may be put in practice, and will do my part to promote it.
That done, he gone, I to the Office, where busy till night; and then
with comfort to sit with my wife, and get her to read to me, and so to
supper, and to bed, with my mind at mighty ease.

25th. Up, and by coach with W. Hewer to see W. Coventry; but he gone
out, I to White Hall, and there waited on Lord Sandwich, which I have
little encouragement to do, because of the difficulty of seeing him, and
the little he hath to say to me when I do see him, or to any body else,
but his own idle people about him, Sir Charles Harbord, &c. Thence
walked with him to White Hall, where to the Duke of York; and there the
Duke, and Wren, and I, by appointment in his closet, to read over our
letter to the Office, which he heard, and signed it, and it is to my
mind, Mr. Wren having made it somewhat sweeter to the Board, and yet
with all the advice fully, that I did draw it up with. He [the Duke]
said little more to us now, his head being full of other business; but
I do see that he do continue to put a value upon my advice; and so Mr.
Wren and I to his chamber, and there talked: and he seems to hope that
these people, the Duke of Buckingham and Arlington, will run themselves
off of their legs; they being forced to be always putting the King upon
one idle thing or other, against the easiness of his nature, which he
will never be able to bear, nor they to keep him to, and so will lose
themselves. And, for in