me some sheets of paper varnished on one side, which lies very white and
smooth and, I think, will do our business most exactly, and will come up
to the use that I intended them for, and I am apt to believe will be an
invention that will take in the world. I have made up a little book of it
to give Sir W. Coventry to-morrow, and am very well pleased with it. Home
with them, and there find my aunt Wight with my wife come to take her
leave of her, being going for the summer into the country; and there was
also Mrs. Mary Batelier and her sister, newly come out of France, a black,
very black woman, but mighty good-natured people both, as ever I saw.
Here I made the black one sing a French song, which she did mighty
innocently; and then Mrs. Lovett play on the lute, which she do very well;
and then Mercer and I sang; and so, with great pleasure, I left them,
having shewed them my chamber, and L1000 in gold, which they wondered at,
and given them sweetmeats, and shewn my aunt Wight my father's picture,
which she admires. So I left them and to the office, where Mr. Moore come
to me and talking of my Lord's family business tells me that Mr. Sheply is
ignorantly, we all believe, mistaken in his accounts above L700 more than
he can discharge himself of, which is a mighty misfortune, poor man, and
may undo him, and yet every body believes that he do it most honestly. I
am troubled for him very much. He gone, I hard at the office till night,
then home to supper and to bed.

10th. Up, and to the office, where busy all the morning, sitting, and
there presented Sir W. Coventry with my little book made up of Lovett's
varnished paper, which he and the whole board liked very well. At noon
home to dinner and then to the office; the yarde being very full of women
(I believe above three hundred) coming to get money for their husbands and
friends that are prisoners in Holland; and they lay clamouring and
swearing and cursing us, that my wife and I were afeard to send a
venison-pasty that we have for supper to-night to the cook's to be baked,