ney. I told you that I had near double that sum, and that the half of
it is more than my mother knows I am mistress of. You are afraid that my
mother will question me on this subject; and then you think I must own
the truth. But little as I love equivocation, and little as you would
allow of it in your Anna Howe, it is hard if I cannot (were I to be put
to it ever so closely) find something to say that would bring me off,
as you have, what can you do at such a place as London?--You don't know
what occasion you may have for messengers, intelligence, and suchlike.
If you don't oblige me, I shall not think your stomach so much down as
you say it is, and as, in this one particular, I think it ought to be.

As to the state of things between my mother and me, you know enough of
her temper, not to need to be told that she never espouses or resents
with indifference. Yet will she not remember that I am her daughter. No,
truly, I am all my papa's girl.

She was very sensible, surely, of the violence of my poor father's
temper, that she can so long remember that, when acts of tenderness and
affection seem quite forgotten. Some daughters would be tempted to think
that controul sat very heavy upon a mother, who can endeavour to exert
the power she has over a child, and regret, for years after death, that
she had not the same over a husband.

If this manner of expression becomes not me of my mother, the fault will
be somewhat extenuated by the love I always bore to my father, and by
the reverence I shall ever pay to his memory: for he was a fond father,
and perhaps would have been as tender a husband, had not my mother and
he been too much of a temper to agree.

The misfortune was, in short, that when one was out of humour, the
other would be so too: yet neither of their tempers comparatively
bad. Notwithstanding all which, I did not imagine, girl as I was in my
father's life-time, that my mother's part of the yoke sat so heavy upon
her neck as she gives me room to think it did, whenever she is pleased
to disclaim her part of me.

Both parents, as I have often thought, should be very careful, if they
would secure to themselves the undivided love of their children, that,
of all things, they should avoid such durable contentions with each
other, as should distress their children in choosing their party, when
they would be glad to reverence both as they ought.

But here is the thing: there is not a better manager of affairs in the