LITMIR.BIZ

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was reduced very low indeed, and was often delirious; but nothing lay so near me, as the fear that when I was light-headed, I should say something or other to his prejudice. I was distressed in my mind also to see him, and so he was to see me, for he really loved me most passionately; but it could not be; there was not the least room to desire it on one side, or other.

      It was near five weeks that I kept my bed, and though the violence of my fever abated in three weeks, yet it several times returned; and the physicians said two or three times they could do no more for me, but that they must leave nature and the distemper to fight it out. After the end of five weeks I grew better, but was so weak, so altered, and recovered so slowly, that the physicians apprehended I should go into a consumption; and which vexed me most, they gave their opinion, that my mind was oppressed, that something troubled me, and, in short, that I was in love: upon this, the whole house set upon me to press me to tell, whether I was in love or not, and with whom? But as I well might, I denied my being in love at all.

      They had on this occasion a squabble one day about me at table, that had like to put the whole family in an uproar, they happened to be all at table, but the father; as for me I was ill, and in my chamber. At the beginning of the talk, the old gentlewoman, who had sent me somewhat to eat, bid her maid go up, and ask me if I would have any more; but the maid brought down word, I had not eaten half what she had sent me already.

      “Alas,” says the old lady, “that poor girl; I am afraid she will never be well.”

      “Well!” says the elder brother, “how should Mrs. Betty be well, they say she is in love?”

      “I believe nothing of it,” says the old gentlewoman.

      “I don’t know,” says the eldest sister, “what to say to it, they have made such a rout about her being so handsome, and so charming, and I know not what, and that in her hearing, too, that has turned the creature’s head, I believe, and who knows what possessions may follow such doing? For my part I don’t know what to make of it.”

      “Why, sister, you must acknowledge she is very handsome,” says the elder brother.

      “Aye, and a great deal handsomer than you, sister,” says Robin, “and that’s your mortification.”

      “Well, well, that is not the question,” says his sister. “The girl is well enough, and she knows it, she need not be told of it to make her vain.”

      “We don’t talk of her being vain,” says the elder brother, “but of her being in love; maybe she is in love with herself, it seems my sisters think so.”

      “I would she was in love with me,” says Robin. “I’d quickly put her out of her pain.”

      “What do you mean by that, son?” says the old lady, “how can you talk so?”

      “Why, madam,” says Robin again, very honestly, “do you think I’d let the poor girl die for love, and of me too, that is so near at hand to be had.”

      “Fie, brother,” says the second sister, “how can you talk so? Would you take a creature that has not a groat in the world?”

      “Prithee, child,” says Robin. “Beauty’s a portion, and good humour with it is a double portion; I wish thou hadst half her stock of both for thy portion.”

      So there was her mouth stopped.

      “I find,” says the eldest sister, “if Betty is not in love, my brother is. I wonder he had not broke his mind to Betty. I warrant she won’t say ‘No’.”

      “They that yield when they are asked,” said Robin, “are one step before them that were never asked to yield, and two steps before them that yield before they are asked; and that’s an answer to you, sister.”

      This fired the sister, and she flew into a passion, and said, things were come to that pass, that it was time the wench—meaning me—was out of the family; and but that she was not fit to be turned out, she hoped her father and mother would consider of it, as soon as she could be removed.

      Robin replied, that was for the master and mistress of the family, who were not to be taught by one that had so little judgement as his eldest sister.

      It run up a great deal farther; the sister scolded, Robin rallied and bantered, but poor Betty lost ground by it extremely in the family: I heard of it, and cried heartily, and the old lady came up to me, somebody having told her that I was so much concerned about it. I complained to her, that it was very hard the doctors should pass such a censure upon me, for which they had no ground; and that it was still harder, considering the circumstances I was under in the family; that I hoped I had done nothing to lessen her esteem for me, or given any occasion for the bickering between her sons and daughters; and I had more need to think of a coffin, than of being in love, and begged she would not let me suffer in her opinion for anybody’s mistakes but my own.

      She was sensible of the justice of what I said, but told me, since there had been such a clamour among them, and that her younger son talked after such a rattling way as he did, she desired I would be so faithful to her, as to answer her but one question sincerely.

      I told her I would, and with the utmost plainness and sincerity. Why then the question was, “whether there was anything between her son Robert and me?”

      I told her with all the protestations of sincerity that I was able to make, and as I might well do, that there was not, nor ever had been; I told her, that Mr. Robert had rattled and jested, as she knew it was his way, and that I took it always as I supposed he meant it, to be a wild airy way of discourse that had no signification in it; and assured her, that there was not the least tittle of what she understood by it between us; and that those who had suggested it, had done me a great deal of wrong, and Mr. Robert no service at all.

      The old lady was fully satisfied, and kissed me, spoke cheerfully to me, and bid me take care of my health, and want for nothing, and so took her leave. But when she came down, she found the brother and all his sisters together by the ears; they were angry even to passion, at his upbraiding them with their being homely, and having never had any sweethearts, never having been asked the question, their being so forward as almost to ask first, and the like. He rallied them with Mrs. Betty; how pretty, how good humoured, how she sung better than they did, and danced better, and how much handsomer she was; and in doing this, he omitted no ill-natured thing that could vex them. The old lady came down in the height of it, and to stop it, told them the discourse she had had with me, and how I answered, that there was nothing between Mr. Robert and I.

      “She’s wrong there,” says Robin, “for if there was not a great deal between us, we should be closer together than we are. I told her I loved her hugely,” says he, “but I could never make the jade believe I was in earnest.”

      “I do not know how you should,” says his mother, “nobody in their senses could believe you were in earnest, to talk so to a poor girl, whose circumstances you know so well.”

      “But prithee, son,” adds she, “since you tell us you could not make her believe you were in earnest, what must we believe about it? For you ramble so in your discourse, that nobody knows whether you are in earnest or in jest. But as I find the girl by her own confession has answered truly, I wish you would do so too, and tell me seriously, so that I may depend upon it. Is there anything in it or no? Are you in earnest or no? Are you distracted indeed, or are you not? ‘Tis a weighty question, I wish you would make us easy about it.”

      “By my faith, madam,” says Robin, “‘tis in vain to mince the matter, or tell any more lies about it, I am in earnest, as much as a man is that’s going to be hanged. If Mrs. Betty would say she loved me, and that she would marry me, I’d have her tomorrow morning fasting; and say ‘To have and to hold,’ instead of eating my breakfast.”

      “Well,” says the mother, “then there’s one son lost.” And she said it in a very mournful tone, as one greatly concerned at it.

      “I hope not, madam,” says Robin, “no man is lost, when a good wife has found him.”

      “Why,

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