“No, no,” said the king, “you must not expect a man, while he continues preaching, to go on publishing. Every sermon printed, diminishes his stock for the pulpit.”
“Very true,” said the queen, “but I believe the Bishop of Chester has enough to spare.”
The king then praised Carr's sermons, and said he liked none but what were plain and unadorned.
“Nor I neither,” said the queen; “but for me, it is, I suppose, because the others I don't understand.”
The king then, looking at his watch, said, “It is eight o'clock, and if we don't go now, the children will be sent to the other house.”
“Yes, your majesty,” cried the queen, instantly rising.
Mrs. Delany put on her majesty's cloak, and she took a very kind leave of her. She then curtsied separately to us all, and the king handed her to the carriage.
It is the custom for everybody they speak to to attend them out, but they would not suffer Mrs. Delany to move. Miss Port, Mr. Dewes, and his little daughter, and myself, all accompanied them, and saw them in their coach, and received their last gracious nods.
When they were gone, Mrs. Delany confessed she had heard the king's knock at the door before she came into the drawing-room, but would not avow it, that I might not run away. Well! being over was so good a thing, that I could not but be content.
The queen, indeed, is a most charming woman. She appears to me full of sense and graciousness, mingled with delicacy of mind and liveliness of temper. She speaks English almost perfectly well, with great choice and copiousness of language, though now and then with foreign idiom, and frequently with a foreign accent. Her manners have an easy dignity, with a most engaging simplicity, and she has all that fine high breeding which the mind, not the station, gives, of carefully avoiding to distress those who converse with her, or studiously removing the embarrassment she cannot prevent.