me to my face.—­O, faith, I am sorry you had my twelfth so soon; I doubt you will stay longer for the rest.  I’m so ’fraid you have got my fourteenth while I am writing this; and I would always have one letter from Presto reading, one travelling, and one writing.  As for the box, I now believe it lost.  It is directed for Mr. Curry, at his house in Capel Street, etc.  I had a letter yesterday from Dr. Raymond in Chester, who says he sent his man everywhere, and cannot find it; and God knows whether Mr. Smyth will have better success.  Sterne spoke to him, and I writ to him with the bottle of palsy-water; that bottle, I hope, will not miscarry:  I long to hear you have it.  O, faith, you have too good an opinion of Presto’s care.  I am negligent enough of everything but MD, and I should not have trusted Sterne.—­ But it shall not go so:  I will have one more tug for it.—­As to what you say of Goodman Peasly and Isaac,[11] I answer as I did before.  Fie, child, you must not give yourself the way to believe any such thing:  and afterwards, only for curiosity, you may tell me how these things are approved, and how you like them; and whether they instruct you in the present course of affairs, and whether they are printed in your town, or only sent from hence.—­Sir Andrew Fountaine is recovered; so take your sorrow again, but don’t keep it, fling it to the dogs.  And does little MD walk indeed?—­I’m glad of it at heart.—­Yes, we have done with the plague here:  it was very saucy in you to pretend to have it before your betters.  Your intelligence that the story is false about the officers forced to sell,[12] is admirable.  You may see them all three here every day, no more in the army than you.  Twelve shillings for mending the strong box; that is, for putting a farthing’s worth of iron on a hinge, and gilding it; give him six shillings, and I’ll pay it, and never employ him or his again.—­No indeed, I put off preaching as much as I can.  I am upon another foot:  nobody doubts here whether I can preach, and you are fools.—­ The account you give of that weekly paper[13] agrees with us here.  Mr. Prior was like to be insulted in the street for being supposed the author of it; but one of the last papers cleared him.  Nobody knows who it is, but those few in the secret, I suppose the Ministry and the printer.—­Poor Stella’s eyes!  God bless them, and send them better.  Pray spare them, and write not above two lines a day in broad daylight.  How does Stella look, Madam Dingley?  Pretty well, a handsome young woman still.  Will she pass in a crowd?  Will she make a figure in a country church?—­Stay a little, fair ladies.  I this minute sent Patrick to Sterne:  he brings back word that your box is very safe with one Mr. Earl’s sister in Chester, and that Colonel Edgworth’s widow[14] goes for Ireland on Monday next, and will receive the box at Chester, and deliver it you safe:  so there are some hopes now.—­Well, let us go on to your