Set about defending myself, and I will probe thee still deeper, and convince thee still more effectually, that thou hast more guilt than merit even in this affair.  And as to all the others, in which we were accustomed to hunt in couples, thou wert always the forwardest whelp, and more ready, by far, to run away with me, than I with thee.  Yet canst thou now compose thy horse-muscles, and cry out, How much more hadst thou, Lovelace, to answer for than I have!—­Saying nothing, neither, when thou sayest this, were it true:  for thou wilt not be tried, when the time comes, by comparison.  In short, thou mayest, at this rate, so miserably deceive thyself, that, notwithstanding all thy self-denial and mortification, when thou closest thy eyes, thou mayst perhaps open them in a place where thou thoughtest least to be.

However, consult thy old woman on this subject.  I shall be thought to be out of character, if I go on in this strain.  But really, as to a title to merit in this affair, I do assure thee, Jack, that thou less deservest praise than a horsepond; and I wish I had the sousing of thee.

***

I am actually now employed in taking leave of my friends in the country.  I had once thought of taking Tomlinson, as I called him, with me:  but his destiny has frustrated that intention.

Next Monday I think to see you in town; and then you, and I, and Mowbray, and Tourville, will laugh off that evening together.  They will both accompany me (as I expect you will) to Dover, if not cross the water.  I must leave you and them good friends.  They take extremely amiss the treatment you have given them in your last letters.  They say, you strike at their understandings.  I laugh at them; and tell them, that those people who have least, are the most apt to be angry when it is called into question.

Make up all the papers and narratives you can spare me against the time.  The will, particularly, I expect to take with me.  Who knows but that those things, which will help to secure you in the way you are got into, may convert me?

Thou talkest of a wife, Jack:  What thinkest you of our Charlotte?  Her family and fortune, I doubt, according to thy scheme, are a little too high.  Will those be an objection?  Charlotte is a smart girl.  For piety (thy present turn) I cannot say much:  yet she is as serious as most of her sex at her time of life—­Would flaunt it a little, I believe, too, like the rest of them, were her reputation under covert.

But it won’t do neither, now I think of it:—­Thou art so homely, and so awkward a creature!  Hast such a boatswain-like air!—­People would think she had picked thee up in Wapping, or Rotherhithe; or in going to see some new ship launched, or to view the docks at Chatham, or Portsmouth.  So gaudy and so clumsy!  Thy tawdriness won’t do with Charlotte!—­So sit thee down contented, Belford:  although I think, in a whimsical way, as now, I mentioned Charlotte to thee once before.*