to me.  No, you are mistaken certainly; what should she do amongst all that company, unless she be towards a wedding?  She has been kept at home, poor soul, and suffered so much of purgatory in this world that she needs not fear it in the next; and yet she is as merry as ever she was, which perhaps might make her look young, but that she laughs a little too much, and that will bring wrinkles, they say.  Oh, me! now I talk of laughing, it makes me think of poor Jane.  I had a letter from her the other day; she desired me to present her humble service to her master,—­she did mean you, sure, for she named everybody else that she owes any service to,—­and bid me say that she would keep her word with him.  God knows what you have agreed on together.  She tells me she shall stay long enough there to hear from me once more, and then she is resolved to come away.

Here is a seal, which pray give Walker to set for me very handsomely, and not of any of those fashions he made my others, but of something that may differ from the rest.  ’Tis a plain head, but not ill cut, I think.  My eldest brother is now here, and we expect my youngest shortly, and then we shall be altogether, which I do not think we ever were twice in our lives.  My niece is still with me, but her father threatens to fetch her away.  If I can keep her to Michaelmas I may perhaps bring her up to town myself, and take that occasion of seeing you; but I have no other business that is worth my taking a journey, for I have had another summons from my aunt, and I protest I am afraid I shall be in rebellion there; but ’tis not to be helped.  The widow writes me word, too, that I must expect her here about a month hence; and I find that I shall want no company, but only that which I would have, and for which I could willingly spare all the rest.  Will it be ever thus?  I am afraid it will.  There has been complaints made on me already to my eldest brother (only in general, or at least he takes notice of no more), what offers I refuse, and what a strange humour has possessed me of being deaf to the advice of all my friends.  I find I am to be baited by them all by turns.  They weary themselves, and me too, to very little purpose, for to my thinking they talk the most impertinently that ever people did; and I believe they are not in my debt, but think the same of me.  Sometimes I tell them I will not marry, and then they laugh at me; sometimes I say, “Not yet,” and they laugh more, and would make me believe I shall be old within this twelvemonth.  I tell them I shall be wiser then.  They say ’twill be to no purpose.  Sometimes we are in earnest and sometimes in jest, but always saying something since my brother Henry found his tongue again.  If you were with me I could make sport of all this; but “patience is my penance” is somebody’s motto, and I think it must be mine.

I am your.