I will make very advantageous settlements; such as any common friend shall judge to be so.  But must have all in my own power, while I live:  because, you know, Madam, it is as creditable to the wife, as to the husband, that it should be so.

I am not at fine words.  We are not children; though it is hoped we may have some; for I am a very healthy sound man.  I bless God for it:  and never brought home from my voyages and travels a worser constitution than I took out with me.  I was none of those, I will assure you.  But this I will undertake, that, if you are the survivor, you shall be at the least ten thousand pounds the better for me.  What, in the contrary case, I shall be the better for you, I leave to you, as you shall think my kindness to you shall deserve.

But one thing, Madam, I shall be glad of, that Miss Howe might not live with us then—­[she need not know I write thus]—­but go home to Mr. Hickman, as she is upon the point of marriage, I hear:  and if she behaves dutifully, as she should do, to us both, she shall be the better; for I said so before.

You shall manage all things, both mine and your own; for I know but little of land-matters.  All my opposition to you shall be out of love, when I think you take too much upon you for your health.

It will be very pretty for you, I should think, to have a man of experience, in a long winter’s evening, to sit down by you, and tell you stories of foreign parts, and the customs of the nations he has consorted with.  And I have fine curiosities of the Indian growth, such as ladies love, and some that even my niece Clary, when she was good, never saw.  These, one by one, as you are kind to me, (which I make no question of, because I shall be kind to you,) shall be all yours.  Prettier entertainment by much, than sitting with a too smartish daughter, sometimes out of humour; and thwarting, and vexing, as daughters will, (when women-grown especially, as I have heard you often observe;) and thinking their parents old, without paying them the reverence due to years; when, as in your case, I make no sort of doubt, they are young enough to wipe their noses.  You understand me, Madam.

As for me myself, it will be very happy, and I am delighted with the thinking of it, to have, after a pleasant ride, or so, a lady of like experience with myself to come home to, and but one interest betwixt us:  to reckon up our comings-in together; and what this day and this week has produced—­O how this will increase love!—­most mightily will it increase it!—­and I believe I shall never love you enough, or be able to show you all my love.