You ask me how I pass my time here.  I can give you a perfect account not only of what I do for the present, but of what I am likely to do this seven years if I stay here so long.  I rise in the morning reasonably early, and before I am ready I go round the house till I am weary of that, and then into the garden till it grows too hot for me.  About ten o’clock I think of making me ready, and when that’s done I go into my father’s chamber, from whence to dinner, where my cousin Molle and I sit in great state in a room, and at a table that would hold a great many more.  After dinner we sit and talk till Mr. B. comes in question, and then I am gone.  The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o’clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and sit in the shade singing of ballads.  I go to them and compare their voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, and find a vast difference there; but, trust me, I think these are as innocent as those could be.  I talk to them, and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so.  Most commonly, when we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings at their heels.  I, that am not so nimble, stay behind; and when I see them driving home their cattle, I think ’tis time for me to return too.  When I have supped, I go into the garden, and so to the side of a small river that runs by it, when I sit down and wish you were with me (you had best say this is not kind neither).  In earnest, ’tis a pleasant place, and would be much more so to me if I had your company.  I sit there sometimes till I am lost with thinking; and were it not for some cruel thoughts of the crossness of our fortunes that will not let me sleep there, I should forget that there were such a thing to be done as going to bed.

Since I writ this my company is increased by two, my brother Harry and a fair niece, the eldest of my brother Peyton’s children.  She is so much a woman that I am almost ashamed to say I am her aunt; and so pretty, that, if I had any design to gain of servants, I should not like her company; but I have none, and therefore shall endeavour to keep her here as long as I can persuade her father to spare her, for she will easily consent to it, having so much of my humour (though it be the worst thing in her) as to like a melancholy place and little company.  My brother John is not come down again, nor am I certain when he will be here.  He went from London into Gloucestershire to my sister who was very ill, and his youngest girl, of which he was very fond, is since dead.  But I believe by that time his wife has a little recovered her sickness and loss of her child, he will be coming this way.  My father is reasonably well, but keeps his chamber still, and will hardly, I am afraid, ever be so perfectly recovered as to come abroad again.