casions, mind my eyes. I did, with much difficulty, pacify her, and
were friends, she desiring that hereafter, at that house, we might
always sit either above in a box, or, if there be [no] room, close up to
the lower boxes.
3rd. So up, and to the Office till noon, and then home to a little
dinner, and thither again till night, mighty busy, to my great content,
doing a great deal of business, and so home to supper, and to bed; I
finding this day that I may be able to do a great deal of business by
dictating, if I do not read myself, or write, without spoiling my eyes,
I being very well in my eyes after a great day's work.
4th. Up, and at the office all the morning. At noon home with my people
to dinner, and then after dinner comes Mr. Spong to see me, and brings
me my Parallelogram, in better order than before, and two or three
draughts of the port of Brest, to my great content, and I did call Mr.
Gibson to take notice of it, who is very much pleased therewith; and
it seems this Parallelogram is not, as Mr. Sheres would, the other day,
have persuaded me, the same as a Protractor, which do so much the more
make me value it, but of itself it is a most usefull instrument. Thence
out with my wife and him, and carried him to an instrument-maker's shop
in Chancery Lane, that was once a 'Prentice of Greatorex's, but the
master was not within, and there he [Gibson] shewed me a Parallelogram
in brass, which I like so well that I will buy, and therefore bid it be
made clean and fit for me. And so to my cozen Turner's, and there
just spoke with The., the mother not being at home; and so to the New
Exchange, and thence home to my letters; and so home to supper and to
bed. This morning I made a slip from the Office to White Hall, expecting
Povy's business at a Committee of Tangier, at which I would be, but it
did not meet, and so I presently back.
5th. Up betimes, by coach to Sir W. Coventry's, and with him by coach
to White Hall, and there walked in the garden talking of several things,
and by my visit to keep fresh my interest in him; and there he tells me
how it hath been talked that he was to go one of the Commissioners to
Ireland, which he was resolved never to do, unless directly commanded;
for he told me that for to go thither, while the Chief Secretary of
State was his professed enemy, was to undo himself; and, therefore, it
were better for him to venture being unhappy here, than to go further
off, to be undone by some
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