great content, and at night weary home, where Mr. Creed waited for me, and
he and I walked in the garden, where he told me he is now in a hurry
fitting himself for sea, and that it remains that he deals as an ingenuous
man with me in the business I wot of, which he will do before he goes.
But I perceive he will have me do many good turns for him first, both as
to his bills coming to him in this office, and also in his absence at the
Committee of Tangier, which I promise, and as he acquits himself to me I
will willingly do. I would I knew the worst of it, what it is he intends,
that so I may either quit my hands of him or continue my kindness still to
him.

25th. We staid late, and he lay with me all night and rose very merry
talking, and excellent company he is, that is the truth of it, and a most
cunning man. He being gone I to the office, where we sat all the morning.
At noon to dinner, and then to my office busy, and by and by home with Mr.
Deane to a lesson upon raising a Bend of Timbers,

[This seems to refer to knee timber, of which there was not a
sufficient supply. A proposal was made to produce this bent wood
artificially: "June 22, 1664. Sir William Petty intimated that it
seemed by the scarcity and greater rate of knee timber that nature
did not furnish crooked wood enough for building: wherefore he
thought it would be fit to raise by art, so much of it in
proportion, as to reduce it to an equal rate with strait timber"
(Birch's "History of the Royal Society,")]

and he being gone I to the office, and there came Captain Taylor, and he
and I home, and I have done all very well with him as to the business of
the last trouble, so that come what will come my name will be clear of any
false dealing with him. So to my office again late, and then to bed.