“’You almost wish, my dear Miss tells me, that I would undertake you!—­This is very good of you.  Sir Simon,’ I might (would his patience have suffered me to run on thus) have added; ’but I hope, since you are so sensible that you want to be undertaken, (and since this peevish rashness convinces me that you do) that you will undertake yourself; that you will not, when your indisposition requires the attendance and duty of your dear lady and daughter, make it more uncomfortable to them, by adding a difficulty of being pleased, and an impatience of spirit, to the concern their duty and affection make them have for you; and, at least, resolve never to take a book into your hand again, if you cannot make a better use of it, than you did then.’

“But Sir Simon will say, I have already undertaken him, were he to see this.  Yet my Lady Darnford once begged I would give him a hint or two on this subject, which, she was pleased to say, would be better received from me than from any body:  and if it be a little too severe, it is but a just reprisal made by one whose ears, he knows, he has cruelly wounded more than once, twice, or thrice, besides, by what he calls his innocent double entendres, and who, if she had not resented it, when an opportunity offered, must have been believed, by him, to be neither more nor less than a hypocrite.  There’s for you, Sir Simon:  and so here ends all my malice; for now I have spoken my mind.

“Yet I hope your dear papa will not be so angry as to deny me, for this my freedom, the request I make to him, to your mamma, and to your dear self, for your beloved company, for a month or two in Bedfordshire, and at London:  and if you might be permitted to winter with us at the latter, how happy should I be!  It will be half done the moment you desire it.  Sir Simon loves you too well to refuse you, if you are earnest in it.  Your honoured mamma is always indulgent to your requests:  and Mr. B. as well in kindness to me, as for the great respect he bears you, joins with me to beg this favour of you, and of Sir Simon and my lady.

“If it can be obtained, what pleasure and improvement may I not propose to myself, with so polite a companion, when we are carried by Mr. B. to the play, the opera, and other of the town diversions!  We will work, visit, read, and sing together, and improve one another; you me, in every word you shall speak, in every thing you shall do; I you, by my questions, and desire of information, which will make you open all your breast to me:  and so unlocking that dear storehouse of virtuous knowledge, improve your own notions the more for communicating them.  O my dear Miss Damford I how happy is it in your power to make me!