Happy, happy lady! May you ever be so! May you always convert your
enemies, invigorate the lukewarm, and every day multiply your friends,
wishes _your most affectionate,_
POLLY DARNFORD.
P.S. How I rejoice in the joy of your honest parents! God bless 'em!
I am glad Lady Davers is so wise. Every one I have named desire their
best respects. Write oftener, and omit not the minutest thing: for
every line of yours carries instruction with it.
LETTER XXII
From Sir Simon Darnford to Mr. B.
SIR,
Little did I think I should ever have occasion to make a formal
complaint against a person very dear to you, and who I believe
deserves to be so; but don't let her be so proud and so vain of
obliging and pleasing you, as to make her not care how she affronts
every body else.
The person is no other than the wife of your bosom, who has taken such
liberties with me as ought not to be taken, and sought to turn my own
child against me, and make a dutiful girl a rebel.
If people will set up for virtue, and all that, let 'em be uniformly
virtuous, or I would not give a farthing for their pretences.
Here I have been plagued with gouts, rheumatisms, and nameless
disorders, ever since you left us, which have made me call for a
little more attendance than ordinary; and I had reason to think myself
slighted, where an indulgent father can least bear to be so, that is,
where he most loves; and that by young upstarts, who are growing up to
the enjoyment of those pleasures which have run away from me, fleeting
rascals as they are! before I was willing to part with them.
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