Letter XXXI

Summary

From Miss Darnford, to Mrs. B.

My dear Mrs. B.

Every Post you more and more oblige us to admire and love you: And let me tell you, I will gladly receive your Letters upon your own Terms: Only when your worthy Parents have perused them, see that I have every Line of them again.

Your Account of the Arrival of your noble Guests, and their Behaviour to you, and yours to them; your Conversation, and wise Determination, on the offer’d Title of Baronet; the just Applauses conferred on you by all, particularly the good Countess, your Breakfast Conversation, and the Narrative of your saucy abominable Master, tho’ amiable Husband; all delight us beyond Expression.

Do, go on, dear excellent Lady, with your charming Journals, and let us know all that passes.

As to the State of Matters with us, I have desired my Papa to allow me to decline Mr. Murray's Addresses. The good Man lov’d me most violently, nay, he could not live without me; Life was no Life, unless I favour’d him: But yet, after a few more of these Flights, he is trying to sit down satisfy’d without my Papa's foolish perverse Girl, as Sir Simon calls me, and to transpose his Affections to a worthier Object, my Sister Nancy; and it would make you smile to see how, a little while before he directly apply’d to her, she screw’d up her Mouth to my Mamma, and, Truly, she’d have none of Polly's Leavings; no, not she!——But no sooner did he declare himself in Form, than the gaudy Wretch, as he was before with her, became a well-dress’d Gentleman;——the chattering Magpye, (for he talks and laughs much) quite conversible,—and has something agreeable to say on every Subject. Once, He would make a good Master of the Buck-hounds; but now, Really, the more one is in his Company, the more polite one finds him.

Then, on his Part,—Indeed, he happened to see Miss Polly first; and, Truly, he could have thought himself very happy in so agreeable a young Lady: Yet there was always something of Majesty (what a stately Name is that for Ill-Nature!) in Miss Nanny;