yesterday. 'What are our affairs to him? He can have no view but
to serve us. Cruel to send back to town, un-audienced, unseen, a man of
his business and importance. He never stirs a-foot, but something of
consequence depends upon his movements. A confounded thing to trifle
thus humoursomely with such a gentleman's moments!--These women think,
that all the business of the world must stand still for their figaries
[a good female word, Jack!] the greatest triflers in the creation, to
fancy themselves the most important beings in it--marry come up! as I
have heard goody Sorlings say to her servants, when she has rated at them
with mingled anger and disdain.'

After all, methinks I want those tostications [thou seest how women, and
women's words, fill my mind] to be over, happily over, that I may sit
down quietly, and reflect upon the dangers I have passed through, and the
troubles I have undergone. I have a reflecting mind, as thou knowest;
but the very word reflecting implies all got over.

What briars and thorns does the wretch rush into (a scratched face and
tattered garments the unavoidable consequence) who will needs be for
striking out a new path through overgrown underwood; quitting that beaten
out for him by those who have travelled the same road before him!

***

A visit from the widow Bevis, in my own apartment. She tells me, that my
spouse had thoughts last night, after I was gone to my lodgings, of
removing from Mrs. Moore's.

I almost wish she had attempted to do so.

Miss Rawlins, it seems, who was applied to upon it, dissuaded her from
it.

Mrs. Moore also, though she did not own that Will. lay in the house, (or
rather set up in it, courting,) set before her the difficulties, which,
in her opinion, she would have to get clear off, without my knowledge;
assuring her, that she could be no where more safe than with her, till
she had fixed whither to go. And the lady herself recollected, that if
she went, she might miss the expected letter from her dear friend Miss
Howe! which, as she owned, was to direct her future steps.

She must also surely have some curiosity to know what her uncle's friend
had to say to her from her uncle, contemptuously as she yesterday treated
a man of his importance. Nor could she, I should think, be absolutely
determined to put herself out of the way of receiving the visits of two
of the principal ladies of my family, and to break entirely with me in
the face of