to see myself come forward. So home, to supper, and to bed.

12th. At my office most of the morning, after I had done among my
painters, and sent away Mr. Shaw and Hawly, who came to give me a visit
this morning. Shaw it seems is newly re-married to a rich widow. At noon
dined at home with my wife, and by and by, by my wife's appointment came
two young ladies, sisters, acquaintances of my wife's brother's, who are
desirous to wait upon some ladies, and proffer their service to my wife.
The youngest, indeed, hath a good voice, and sings very well, besides
other good qualitys; but I fear hath been bred up with too great liberty
for my family, and I fear greater inconveniences of expenses, and my
wife's liberty will follow, which I must study to avoid till I have a
better purse; though, I confess, the gentlewoman, being pretty handsome,
and singing, makes me have a good mind to her. Anon I took them by coach
and carried them to a friend's of theirs, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and
there I left them and I to the Temple by appointment to my cousin Roger's
chamber, where my uncle Thomas and his son Thomas met us, I having hoped
that they would have agreed with me to have had [it] ended by my cozen
Roger, but they will have two strangers to be for them against two others
of mine, and so we parted without doing any thing till the two send me the
names of their arbiters. Thence I walked home, calling a little in Paul's
Churchyard, and, I thank God, can read and never buy a book, though I have
a great mind to it. So to the Dolphin Tavern near home, by appointment,
and there met with Wade and Evett, and have resolved to make a new attempt
upon another discovery, in which God give us better fortune than in the
other, but I have great confidence that there is no cheat in these people,
but that they go upon good grounds, though they have been mistaken in the
place of the first. From thence, without drinking a drop of wine, home to
my office and there made an end, though late, of my collection of the
prices of masts for these twelve years to this day, in order to the buying