th his unmerited
acquirements, and turned all things topsy-turvy.

If you will be informed of the particulars of our contention, after
you have known in general that your unhappy affair was the subject, why
then, I think I must tell you.

Yet how shall I?==I feel my cheek glow with mingled shame and
indignation.--Know then, my dear,--that I have been--as I may say--that
I have been beaten--indeed 'tis true. My mother thought fit to slap my
hands to get from me a sheet of a letter she caught me writing to you;
which I tore, because she should not read it, and burnt it before her
face.

I know this will trouble you: so spare yourself the pains to tell me it
does.

Mr. Hickman came in presently after. I would not see him. I am either
too much a woman to be beat, or too much a child to have an humble
servant--so I told my mother. What can one oppose but sullens, when it
would be unpardonable so much as to think of lifting up a finger?

In the Harlowe style, She will be obeyed, she says: and even Mr. Hickman
shall be forbid the house, if he contributes to the carrying on of a
correspondence which she will not suffer to be continued.

Poor man! He stands a whimsical chance between us. But he knows he is
sure of my mother; but not of me. 'Tis easy then for him to choose his
party, were it not his inclination to serve you, as it surely is. And
this makes him a merit with me, which otherwise he would not have had;
notwithstanding the good qualities which I have just now acknowledged in
his favour. For, my dear, let my faults in other respects be what they
may, I will pretend to say, that I have in my own mind those qualities
which I praised him for. And if we are to come together, I could for
that reason better dispense with them in him.--So if a husband, who has
a bountiful-tempered wife, is not a niggard, nor seeks to restrain her,
but has an opinion of all she does, that is enough for him: as, on the
contrary, if a bountiful-tempered husband has a frugal wife, it is
best for both. For one to give, and the other to give, except they have
prudence, and are at so good an understanding with each other as to
compare notes, they may perhaps put it out of their power to be just.
Good frugal doctrine, my dear! But this way of putting it is middling
the matter between what I have learnt of my mother's over-prudent and
your enlarged notions.--But from doctrine to fact--

I shut myself up all that day; and what little I did eat,