...  I must find you pleased and in good humour; merry as you were wont to be, when we first met, if you will not have me show that I am nothing akin to my cousin Osborne’s lady.  But what an age it is since we first met, and how great a change it has wrought in both of us! if there had been as great a one on my face, it would be either very handsome or very ugly.  For God’s sake, when we meet, let us design one day to remember old stories in, to ask one another by what degrees our friendship grew to this height ’tis at.  In earnest, I am lost sometimes in thinking of it, and though I can never repent of the share you have in my heart, I know not whether I gave it you willingly or not at first.  No; to speak ingenuously, I think you got an interest there a good while before I thought you had any, and it grew so insensibly and yet so fast, that all the traverses it has met with since have served rather to discover it to me than at all to hinder it.

TO THE SAME.

Wilful woman

[No date; c. 1653.]

I was carried yesterday abroad to a dinner that was designed for mirth, but it seems one ill-humoured person in the company is enough to put all the rest out of tune, for I never saw people perform what they intended worse, and could not forbear telling them so; but to excuse themselves and silence my reproaches they all agreed to say that I spoiled their jollity by wearing the most unseasonable looks that could be put on for such an occasion.  I told them I knew no remedy but leaving me behind them; that my looks were suitable to my fortune though not to a feast.  Fie, I am got into my complaining humour that tires myself as well as every body else, and which (as you observe) helps not at all; would it would leave me and that I should not always have occasion for it, but that’s in nobody’s power, and my Lady Talmash, that says she can do whatever she will, cannot believe whatsoever she pleases.  ’Tis not unpleasant, methinks, to hear her talk how at such a time she was sick, and the physicians told her she would have the small-pox and showed her where they were coming out upon her, but she bethought herself that it was not at all convenient for her to have them at that time; some business she had that required her going abroad, and so she resolved she would not be sick nor was not.  Twenty such stories as these she tells, and then falls into discourses of the strength of reason and power of philosophy till she confounds herself and all that hear her.  You have no such ladies in Ireland....  My poor Lady Vavasor is carried to the Tower, and her situation could not excuse her, because she was acquainted by somebody that there was a plot against the Protector, and did not discover it.  She has told now all that was told her, but vows she will never say from whence she had it; we shall see whether her resolutions are as unalterable as those of my Lady Talmash.