those could be. I talk to them, and find _they
want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the
knowledge that they are so_. Most commonly, while we are in the middle
of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into
the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings at their
heels. I that am not so nimble stay behind, and when I see them
driving home their cattle think it is time for me to return too. When
I have supped I go into the garden, and so to the side of a small
river that runs by it, where I sit down and wish you with me (you
had best say this is not kind, neither). In earnest, it is a pleasant
place, and would be more so to me if I had your company, as I sit
there sometimes till I am lost with thinking; and were it not for some
cruel thoughts of the crossness of my fortune, that will not let me
sleep there, I should forget there were such a thing to be done as
going to bed. Since I writ this, my company is increased by two, my
brother Harry, and a fair niece, my brother Peyton's daughter. She is
so much a woman that I am almost ashamed to say I am her aunt, and so
pretty, that if I had any design to gain a servant I should not like
her company; but I have none, and therefore I shall endeavour to keep
her here as long as I can persuade her father to spare her, for she
will easily consent to it, having so much of my humour (though it
be the worst thing in her) as to like a melancholy place, and little
company.... My father is reasonably well, but keeps his chamber still;
but will hardly, I am afraid, ever be so perfectly recovered as to
come abroad again.

TO THE SAME

_Another pretender_

[No date; c. 1653.]

I could tell you such a story (it is too long to be written), as would
make you see what I never discovered in my life before, that I am
a valiant lady. In earnest, we have had such a skirmish and upon so
foolish an occasion, as I cannot tell which is strangest. The Emperor
and his proposals began it; I talked merrily on it till I saw my
brother put on his sober face, and could hardly then believe he was
in earnest. It seems he was; for when I had spoke freely my meaning it
wrought so with him, as to fetch up all that lay upon his stomach: all
the people that I had ever in my life refused were brought again upon
the stage, like Richard the Third's ghosts, to reproach me withal, and
all the kindness his discoveries could make I had for you was laid to