“O my good lady,” said he, “who can forbear following such an example as you set?  Mr. Simmonds can testify as well as I (for now and then a case requires us to visit together) that we can hardly hear any complaints from our poor patients, let ’em be ever so ill, for the praises and blessings they bestow upon you.”

“It is good Mr. B. that enables and encourages me to do what I do.  Tell them, they must bless God, and bless him, and pray for me, and thank you and Mr. Simmonds:  we all join together, you know, for their good.”

The countess and Lady Davers asked the poor lying-in woman many questions, and left with her, and for her poor sister, a miserable object indeed!—­(God be praised that I am not such an one!) marks of their bounty in gold, and looking upon one another, and then upon me, and lifting up their hands, could not say a word till we were in the coach:  and so we were carried home, after we had just looked in upon a country school, where I pay for the learning of eight children.  And here (I hope I recite not this with pride, though I do with pleasure) is a cursory account of my benevolent weekly round, as my ladies will call it.  I know you will not be displeased with it; but it will highly delight my worthy parents, who, in their way, do a great deal of discreet good in their neighbourhood:  for indeed, Miss, a little matter, prudently bestowed, and on true objects of compassion (whose cases are soon at a crisis, as are those of most labouring people), will go a great way, and especially if laid out properly for ’em, according to the exigencies of their respective cases.—­For such poor people, who live generally low, want very seldom any thing but reviving cordials at first, and good wholesome kitchen physic afterwards:  and then the wheels of nature, being unclogged, new oiled, as it were, and set right, they will go round again with pleasantness and ease for a good while together, by virtue of that exercise which their labour gives them; while the rich and voluptuous are forced to undergo great fatigues to keep theirs clean and in order.

SATURDAY MORNING.

It is hardly right to trouble either of you, my honoured correspondents, with an affair that has vexed me a good deal; and, indeed, should affect me more than any other mistress of a family, for reasons which will be obvious to you, when I tell you the case.  And this I cannot forbear doing.

A pretty genteel young body, my Polly Barlow, as I call her, having been well recommended, and behaved with great prudence till this time, is the cause.