butter and a flagon of water, stirring and rattling, and laughing, and we every minute expecting to have the dish fly about our ears.  She had brought Betty, the fruit-girl, with hampers of strawberries and cherries from Rogers’s, and made her wait upon us, and then made her sup by us at a little table.  The conversation was no less lively than the whole transaction.  There was a Mr. O’Brien arrived from Ireland, who would get the Duchess of Manchester from Mr. Hussey, if she were still at liberty.  I took up the biggest hautboy in the dish, and said to Lady Caroline, “Madam, Miss Ashe desires you would eat this O’Brien strawberry:”  she replied immediately, “I won’t, you hussey.”  You may imagine the laugh this reply occasioned.  After the tempest was a little calmed, the Pollard said, “Now, how any body would spoil this story that was to repeat it, and say, “I won’t, you jade!” In short, the whole air of our party was sufficient, as you will easily imagine, to take up the whole attention of the garden; so much so, that from eleven o’clock till half an hour after one we had the whole concourse round our booth:  at last, they came into the little gardens of each booth on the sides of ours, till Harry Vane took up a bumper, and drank their healths, and was proceeding to treat them with still greater freedom.  It was three o’clock before we got home.  I think I have told you the chief passages.  Lord Granby’s temper had been a little ruffled the night before; the Prince had invited him and Dick Lyttelton to Kew, where he won eleven hundred pounds of the latter, and eight of the former, then cut and told them @e would play with them no longer, for he saw they played so idly, that they were capable of “losing more than they would like.”  Adieu!  I expect in return for this long tale that you will tell me some of your frolics with Robin Cursemother, and some of Miss Marjoram’s bon-mots.

P. S. Dr. Middleton called on me yesterday:  he is come to town to consult his physician for a jaundice and swelled legs, symptoms which, the doctor tells him, and which he believes, can be easily cured:  I think him visibly broke, and near his end.(154) He lately advised me to marry, on the sense of his own happiness; but if any body had advised him to the contrary, at his time of life,(155) I believe he would not have broke so soon.

(145) Alluding to the projected marriages, which soon after took place, between two of the sons of his uncle Lord Walpole:  who each of them married a daughter of Sir Joshua Vanneck.-E.

(146 Miss Ashe was said to have been of very high parentage.  She married Mr. Falconer; an officer in the navy.-E.

(147) Eldest son of Lord Barnard, created Earl of Darlington in 1754.-E.

(148) Upon the death of Charles, Duke of Queensbury and Dover, he succeeded, in 1778, to the title of Queensbury, and died unmarried in 1810.-E.

(149) Afterwards Earl of Harrington.  His gait was so singular, that he was generally known by the nickname of Peter Shamble.-E.