LETTER XXVIII

In answer to the preceding

MY DEAR MRS. B.,

You charm us all with your letters.  Mr. Peters says, he will never go to bed, nor rise, but he will pray for you, and desires I will return his thankful acknowledgment for your favourable opinion of him, and kind allowances.  If there be an angel on earth, he says, you are one.  My papa, although he has seen your stinging reflection upon his refusal to protect you, is delighted with you too; and says, when you come down to Lincolnshire again, he will be undertaken by you in good earnest:  for he thinks it was wrong in him to deny you his protection.

We all smiled at the description of your own uncommon courtship.  And, as they say the days of courtship are the happiest part of life, if we had not known that your days of marriage are happier by far than any other body’s courtship, we must needs have pitied.  But as the one were days of trial and temptation, the others are days of reward and happiness:  may the last always continue to be so, and you’ll have no occasion to think any body happier than Mrs. B.!

I thank you heartily for your good wishes as to the man of sense.  Mr. Murray has been here, and continues his visits.  He is a lively gentleman, well enough in his person, has a tolerable character, yet loves company, and will take his bottle freely; my papa likes him ne’er the worse for that:  he talks a good deal; dresses gay, and even richly, and seems to like his own person very well—­no great pleasure this for a lady to look forward to; yet he falls far short of that genteel ease and graceful behaviour, which distinguish your Mr. B. from any body I know.

I wish Mr. Murray would apply to my sister.  She is an ill-natured girl; but would make a good wife, I hope; and fancy she’d like him well enough.  I can’t say I do.  He laughs too much; has something boisterous in his conversation:  his complaisance is not pretty; he is, however, well versed in country sports; and my papa loves him for that too, and says—­“He is a most accomplished gentleman.”—­“Yes Sir,” cry I, “as gentlemen go.”—­“You must be saucy,” says Sir Simon, “because the man offers himself to your acceptance.  A few years hence, perhaps, if you remain single, you’ll alter your note, Polly, and be willing to jump at a much less worthy tender.”

I could not help answering that, although I paid due honour to all my papa was pleased to say, I could not but hope he would be mistaken in this.  But I have broken my mind to my dear mamma, who tells me, she will do me all the pleasure she can; but would be loth the youngest daughter should go first, as she calls it.  But if I could come and live with you a little now and then, I did not care who married, unless such an one offered as I never expect.