I know this will trouble you: so spare yourself the pains to tell me it does.
Mr. Hickman came in presently after. I would not see him. I am either too much a woman to be beat, or too much a child to have an humble servant—so I told my mother. What can one oppose but sullens, when it would be unpardonable so much as to think of lifting up a finger?
In the Harlowe style, She will be obeyed, she says: and even Mr. Hickman shall be forbid the house, if he contributes to the carrying on of a correspondence which she will not suffer to be continued.
Poor man! He stands a whimsical chance between us. But he knows he is sure of my mother; but not of me. 'Tis easy then for him to choose his party, were it not his inclination to serve you, as it surely is. And this makes him a merit with me, which otherwise he would not have had; notwithstanding the good qualities which I have just now acknowledged in his favour. For, my dear, let my faults in other respects be what they may, I will pretend to say, that I have in my own mind those qualities which I praised him for. And if we are to come together, I could for that reason better dispense with them in him.—So if a husband, who has a bountiful-tempered wife, is not a niggard, nor seeks to restrain her, but has an opinion of all she does, that is enough for him: as, on the contrary, if a bountiful-tempered husband has a frugal wife, it is best for both. For one to give, and the other to give, except they have prudence, and are at so good an understanding with each other as to compare notes, they may perhaps put it out of their power to be just. Good frugal doctrine, my dear! But this way of putting it is middling the matter between what I have learnt of my mother's over-prudent and your enlarged notions.—But from doctrine to fact—
I shut myself up all that day; and what little I did eat, eat alone. But at night she sent up Kitty with a command, upon my obedience, to attend her at supper.
I went down; but most gloriously in the sullens. YES, and NO, were great words with me, to every thing she asked, for a good while.
That behaviour, she told me, should not do for her.
Beating should not do for me, I said.
My bold resistance, she told me, had provoked her to slap my hand; and she was sorry to have been so provoked. But again insisted that I would either give up my correspondence absolutely, or let her see all that passed in it.
I must not do either, I told her. It was unsuitable both to my inclination and to my honour, at the instigation of base minds to give up a friend in distress.