Then I hope he will be angry with you. I hope that he will resent your ill treatment of him.

Too late, too late to begin, Harriet. I won’t take it of him now. He has never let me see that his face can become two sorts of features. The poor man can look sorrowful; that I know full well: but I shall always laugh when he attempts to look angry.

You know better, Charlotte. You may give him so much cause for anger, that you may make it habitual to him, and then would be glad to see him pleased. Men have a hundred ways that women have not, to divert themselves abroad, when they cannot be happy at home. This I have heard ob-served by

By your grandmother, Harriet. Good old lady! In her reign it might be so; but you will find, that women now have as many ways to divert themselves abroad as the men. Have you not observed this yourself in one of your letters to Lucy! Ah! my dear! We can every hour of the twenty-four be up with our monarchs, if they are undutiful. But Charlotte Grandison will not, cannot Why, that’s true, my dear But I shall not then be a Grandison. Yet the man will have some security from my brother’s goodness. He is not only good himself, but he makes every one related to him, either for fear or shame, good likewise. But I think that when one week or fortnight is happily over, and my spirits are got up again from the depression into which this abominable hurry puts them, I could fall upon some inventions that would make every one laugh, except the person who might take it into his bead that he may be a sufferer by them: and who can laugh, and be angry, in the same moment?

You should not marry, Charlotte, till this wicked vein of humour and raillery is stopt.

I hope it will hold me till fifty.

Don’t say so, Charlotte Say rather that you hope it will hold you so long only as it may be thought innocent or inoffensive, by the man whom it will be your duty to oblige; and so long as it will bring no discredit to yourself.

Your servant, goody Gravity! But what 7iwst be, must. The man is bound to see it. It will be all his own seeking. He will sin with his eyes open. I think he has seen enough of me to take warning. All that I am concerned about is for the next week or fortnight. He will be king all that time Yet perhaps not quite all neither. And I shall be his sovereign ever after, or I am mistaken. What a duce shall a woman marry a man of talents not superior to her own, and forget to reward herself for her condescension? But, high-ho! There’s a sigh, Harriet. Were I at home, 1 would either sing you a song, or play you a tune, in order to raise my own heart.