25th.  By coach with Sir W. Pen to Covent Garden.  By the way, upon my desire, he told me that I need not fear any reflection upon my Lord for their ill success at Argier, for more could not be done than was done.  I went to my cozen, Thos.  Pepys, there, and talked with him a good while about our country business, who is troubled at my uncle Thomas his folly, and so we parted; and then meeting Sir R. Slingsby in St. Martin’s Lane, he and I in his coach through the Mewes, which is the way that now all coaches are forced to go, because of a stop at Charing Cross, by reason of a drain there to clear the streets.  To Whitehall, and there to Mr. Coventry, and talked with him, and thence to my Lord Crew’s and dined with him, where I was used with all imaginable kindness both from him and her.  And I see that he is afraid that my Lord’s reputacon will a little suffer in common talk by this late success; but there is no help for it now.  The Queen of England (as she is now owned and called) I hear doth keep open Court, and distinct at Lisbon.  Hence, much against my nature and will, yet such is the power of the Devil over me I could not refuse it, to the Theatre, and saw “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” ill done.  And that ended, with Sir W. Pen and Sir G. More to the tavern, and so home with him by coach, and after supper to prayers and to bed.  In full quiet of mind as to thought, though full of business, blessed be God.

26th.  At the office all the morning, so dined at home, and then abroad with my wife by coach to the Theatre to shew her “King and no King,” it being very well done.  And so by coach, though hard to get it, being rainy, home.  So to my chamber to write letters and the journal for these six last days past.

27th.  By coach to Whitehall with my wife (where she went to see Mrs. Pierce, who was this day churched, her month of childbed being out).  I went to Mrs. Montagu and other businesses, and at noon met my wife at the Wardrobe; and there dined, where we found Captain Country (my little Captain that I loved, who carried me to the Sound), come with some grapes and millons

[The antiquity of the cultivation of the melon is very remote.  Both the melon (cucaimis melo) and the water-melon (cucumis citrullus) were introduced into England at the end of the sixteenth century.  See vol. i., p. 228.]

from my Lord at Lisbon, the first that ever I saw any, and my wife and I eat some, and took some home; but the grapes are rare things.  Here we staid; and in the afternoon comes Mr. Edwd.  Montagu (by appointment this morning) to talk with my Lady and me about the provisions fit to be bought, and sent to my Lord along with him.  And told us, that we need not trouble ourselves how to buy them, for the King would pay for all, and that he would take care to get them:  which put my Lady and me into a great deal of ease of mind.  Here we staid and supped too, and, after my wife had put up some of the grapes in a basket for to be sent to the King, we took coach and home, where we found a hampire of millons sent to me also.