I have been reckoning up how many faults you lay to my charge in your
last letter, and I find I am severe, unjust, unmerciful, and unkind!
O me! how should one do to mend all those! 'Tis work for an age, and
I fear that I shall be so old before I am good, that 'twill not be
considerable to any body but myself whether I am so or not.... You ask
me how I pass my time here. I can give you a perfect account, not only
of what I do for the present, but what I am likely to do this seven
years if I stay here so long. I rise in the morning reasonably early,
and before I am ready I go round the house till I am weary of that,
and then into the garden till it grows too hot for me. I then think of
making me ready; and when that's done I go into my father's chamber;
from thence to dinner, where my cousin Molle and I sit in great state
in a room and at a table that would hold a great many more. After
dinner we sit and talk till Mr. P. comes in question, and then I am
gone. The heat of the day is spent in reading or working; and about
six or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the
house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and
sit in the shade singing of ballads; I go to them, and compare their
voices and beauty to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of,
and find a vast difference there; but, trust me, I think these are
as innocent as those could be. I talk to them, and find _they
want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the
knowledge that they are so_. Most commonly, while we are in the middle
of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into
the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings at their
heels. I that am not so nimble stay behind, and when I see them
driving home their cattle think it is time for me to return too. When
I have supped I go into the garden, and so to the side of a small
river that runs by it, where I sit down and wish you with me (you
had best say this is not kind, neither). In earnest, it is a pleasant