and Mercer and Tom by water through bridge to
the Spring Garden at Fox Hall, and thence down to Deptford and there did
a little business, and so back home and to bed.

9th. Up betimes, and with Sir W. Pen in his coach to Westminster to
Sir G. Downing's, but missed of him, and so we parted, I by water home,
where busy all the morning, at noon dined at home, and after dinner
to my office, where busy till come to by Lovett and his wife, who have
brought me some sheets of paper varnished on one side, which lies very
white and smooth and, I think, will do our business most exactly,
and will come up to the use that I intended them for, and I am apt to
believe will be an invention that will take in the world. I have made up
a little book of it to give Sir W. Coventry to-morrow, and am very well
pleased with it. Home with them, and there find my aunt Wight with my
wife come to take her leave of her, being going for the summer into the
country; and there was also Mrs. Mary Batelier and her sister, newly
come out of France, a black, very black woman, but mighty good-natured
people both, as ever I saw. Here I made the black one sing a French
song, which she did mighty innocently; and then Mrs. Lovett play on the
lute, which she do very well; and then Mercer and I sang; and so, with
great pleasure, I left them, having shewed them my chamber, and L1000
in gold, which they wondered at, and given them sweetmeats, and shewn my
aunt Wight my father's picture, which she admires. So I left them and to
the office, where Mr. Moore come to me and talking of my Lord's family
business tells me that Mr. Sheply is ignorantly, we all believe,
mistaken in his accounts above L700 more than he can discharge himself
of, which is a mighty misfortune, poor man, and may undo him, and yet
every body believes that he do it most honestly. I am troubled for him
very much. He gone, I hard at the office till night, then home to supper
and to bed.

10th. Up, and to the office, where busy all the morning, sitting, and
there presented Sir W. Coventry with my little book made up of Lovett's
varnished paper, which he and the whole board liked very well. At noon
home to dinner and then to the office; the yarde being very full of
women (I believe above three hundred) coming to get money for their
husbands and friends that are prisoners in Holland; and they lay
clamouring and swearing and cursing us, that my wife and I were afeard
to send a venison-pasty that we hav