Sir Simon,' I might (would his
patience have suffered me to run on thus) have added; 'but I hope,
since you are so sensible that you _want_ to be undertaken, (and
since this peevish rashness convinces me that you _do_) that you
will undertake _yourself_; that you will not, when your indisposition
requires the attendance and duty of your dear lady and daughter,
make it more uncomfortable to them, by _adding_ a difficulty of being
pleased, and an impatience of spirit, to the concern their duty and
affection make them have for you; and, _at least_, resolve never to
take a book into your hand again, if you cannot make a better use of
it, than you did then.'
"But Sir Simon will say, I have _already undertaken_ him, were he to
see this. Yet my Lady Darnford once begged I would give him a hint or
two on this subject, which, she was pleased to say, would be better
received from me than from any body: and if it be a little too severe,
it is but a just reprisal made by one whose ears, he knows, he has
cruelly wounded more than once, twice, or thrice, besides, by what
he calls his _innocent_ double entendres, and who, if she had not
resented it, when an opportunity offered, must have been believed, by
him, to be neither more nor less than a hypocrite.
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