There, Jack!—­Wilt thou, or wilt thou not, take this for a letter? there’s quantity, I am sure.—­How have I filled a sheet (not a short-hand one indeed) without a subject!  My fellow shall take this; for he is going to town.  And if thou canst think tolerably of such execrable stuff, I will send thee another.

LETTER IV

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, ESQ. 
Six, Saturday morning, July 8.

Have I nothing new, nothing diverting, in my whimsical way, thou askest, in one of thy three letters before me, to entertain thee with?—­And thou tallest me, that, when I have least to narrate, to speak, in the Scottish phrase, I am most diverting.  A pretty compliment, either to thyself, or to me.  To both indeed!—­a sign that thou hast as frothy a heart as I a head.  But canst thou suppose that this admirable woman is not all, is not every thing with me?  Yet I dread to think of her too; for detection of all my contrivances, I doubt, must come next.

The old peer is also full of Miss Harlowe:  and so are my cousins.  He hopes I will not be such a dog [there’s a specimen of his peer-like dialect] as to think of doing dishonourably by a woman of so much merit, beauty, and fortune; and he says of so good a family.  But I tell him, that this is a string he must not touch:  that it is a very tender point:  in short, is my sore place; and that I am afraid he would handle it too roughly, were I to put myself in the power of so ungentle an operator.

He shakes his crazy head.  He thinks all is not as it should be between us; longs to have me present her to him as my wife; and often tells me what great things he will do, additional to his former proposals; and what presents he will make on the birth of the first child.  But I hope the whole of his estate will be in my hands before such an event takes place.  No harm in hoping, Jack!  Lord M. says, were it not for hope, the heart would break.

***

Eight o’clock at Midsummer, and these lazy varletesses (in full health) not come down yet to breakfast!—­What a confounded indecency in young ladies, to let a rake know that they love their beds so dearly, and, at the same time, where to have them!  But I’ll punish them—­they shall breakfast with their old uncle, and yawn at one another as if for a wager; while I drive my phaeton to Colonel Ambroses’s, who yesterday gave me an invitation both to breakfast and dine, on account of two Yorkshire nieces, celebrated toasts, who have been with him this fortnight past; and who, he says, want to see me.  So, Jack, all women do not run away from me, thank Heaven!—­I wish I could have leave of my heart, since the dear fugitive is so ungrateful, to drive her out of it with another beauty.  But who can supplant her?  Who can be admitted to a place in it after Miss Clarissa Harlowe?