brother, and W. Hewer, to dinner to Hinchingbroke, where we had a good
plain country dinner, but most kindly used; and here dined the Minister of
Brampton and his wife, who is reported a very good, but poor man. Here I
spent alone with my Lady, after dinner, the most of the afternoon, and
anon the two twins were sent for from schoole, at Mr. Taylor's, to come to
see me, and I took them into the garden, and there, in one of the
summer-houses, did examine them, and do find them so well advanced in
their learning, that I was amazed at it: they repeating a whole ode
without book out of Horace, and did give me a very good account of any
thing almost, and did make me very readily very good Latin, and did give
me good account of their Greek grammar, beyond all possible expectation;
and so grave and manly as I never saw, I confess, nor could have believed;
so that they will be fit to go to Cambridge in two years at most. They
are both little, but very like one another, and well-looked children.
Then in to my Lady again, and staid till it was almost night again, and
then took leave for a great while again, but with extraordinary kindness
from my Lady, who looks upon me like one of her own family and interest.
So thence, my wife and people by the highway, and I walked over the park
with Mr. Shepley, and through the grove, which is mighty pretty, as is
imaginable, and so over their drawbridge to Nun's Bridge, and so to my
father's, and there sat and drank, and talked a little, and then parted.
And he being gone, and what company there was, my father and I, with a
dark lantern; it being now night, into the garden with my wife, and there
went about our great work to dig up my gold. But, Lord! what a tosse I
was for some time in, that they could not justly tell where it was; that I
begun heartily to sweat, and be angry, that they should not agree better
upon the place, and at last to fear that it was gone but by and by poking
with a spit, we found it, and then begun with a spudd to lift up the
ground. But, good God! to see how sillily they did it, not half a foot
under ground, and in the sight of the world from a hundred places, if any