Letter XXVIII

Summary

In Answer to the preceding.

My dear Mrs. B.

You charm us all, with your Letters. Mr. Peters says he will never go to bed, nor rise, but he will pray for you, and desires I will return his thankful Acknowlegements for your favourable Opinion of him, and kind Allowances. If there be an Angel on Earth, he says you are one. My Papa, altho’ he has seen your stinging Reflection upon his Refusal to protect you, is delighted with you too; and says, when you come down to Lincolnshire again, he will be undertaken by you in good Earnest; for he thinks he was wrong to deny you his Protection.

We are pleas’d with your Apology for Mr. B. ‘Tis so much the Part of a good Wife to extenuate her Husband's Faults, and make the best of his bad Qualities, in order to give the World a good Opinion of him; that, together with the affecting Instances of your Humility, in looking back with so much true Greatness of Mind, to what you were, make us all join to admire you, and own, that nobody can deserve what you deserve.

Yet I amsorry,my dear Friend, to find, notwithstanding your Defence of Mr. B. that you have any Apprehensions about London. ‘Tis pity any thing should give you Concern. As to Mr. B.'s talking in Favour of Polygamy, you cannot expect, that he can shake off all his bad Notions at once. And it must be a great Comfort to you, that his Actions do not correspond, and that his Liberties have been reduced to Notions only. In time, we hope that he will be every thing you wish him. If not, with such an Example before him, he will be the more culpable.

We all smiled at the Description of your own uncommon Courtship. And as they say, the Days of Courtship are the happiest Part of Life, if we had not known that your Days of Marriage are happier by far, than any other body's Courtship, we must needs have pity’d you. But as the one were Days of Trial and Temptation, the other are Days of Reward and Happiness: May the last always continue to be so, and you’ll have no Occasion to think any body happier than Mrs. B.