If you think it worth while when they have read it, you shall have it again.

WEDNESDAY MORNING, SIX O’CLOCK.

For my dear friend permits me to rise an hour sooner than usual, that I may have time to scribble; for he is always pleased to see me so employed, or in reading; often saying, when I am at my needle, (as his sister once wrote) “Your maids can do this, Pamela:  but they cannot write as you can.”  And yet, as he says, when I choose to follow my needle, as a diversion from too intense study, (but, alas!  I know not what study is, as may be easily guessed by my hasty writing, putting down every thing as it comes) I shall then do as I please.  But I promised at setting out, what a good wife I’d endeavour to make:  and every honest body should try to be as good as her word, you know, and such particulars as I then mentioned, I think I ought to dispense with as little as possible; especially as I promised no more than what was my duty to perform, if I had not promised.  But what a preamble is here?  Judge by it what impertinences you may expect as I proceed.

Yesterday evening arrived here my Lord and Lady Davers, their nephew, and the Countess of C., mother of Lady Betty, whom we did not expect, but took it for the greater favour.  It seems her ladyship longed, as she said, to see me; and this was her principal inducement.  The two ladies, and their two women, were in Lord Davers’s coach and six, and my lord and his nephew rode on horseback, attended with a train of servants.

We had expected them to dinner; but they could not reach time enough; for the countess being a little incommoded with her journey, the coach travelled slowly.  My lady would not suffer her lord, nor his nephew, to come hither before her, though on horseback, because she would be present, she said, when his lordship first saw me, he having quite forgot her mother’s Pamela; that was her word.

It rained when they came in; so the coach drove directly to the door, and Mr. B. received them there; but I was in a little sort of flutter, which Mr. B. observing, made me sit down in the parlour to compose myself.  “Where’s Pamela?” said my lady, as soon as she alighted.

I stept out, lest she should take it amiss:  and she took my hand, and kissed me:  “Here, my lady countess,” said she, presenting me to her, “here’s the girl; see if I said too much in praise of her person.”

The countess saluted me with a visible pleasure in her eye, and said, “Indeed, Lady Davers, you have not.  ’Twould have been strange (excuse me, Mrs. B., for I know your story), if such a fine flower had not been transplanted from the field to the garden.”

I made no return, but by a low curtsey, to her ladyship’s compliment.  Then Lady Davers taking my hand again, presented me to her lord:  “See here, my lord, my mother’s Pamela.”—­“And see here, my lord,” said her generous brother, taking my other hand most kindly, “see here your brother’s Pamela too!”