I understand that my father, mother, and sister, and I presume, my brother, and my uncle Antony, are to be at my uncle Harlowe’s this day. God preserve them all, and may they rejoice in many happy birth-days! You will write six words to me concerning their healths.
Direct, for a particular reason, to Mrs. Dorothy Salcombe, to be left till called for, at the Four Swans Inn, Bishopsgate-street.
You know my hand-writing well enough, were not the contents of the letter sufficient to excuse my name, or any other subscription, than that of
Your friend.
LETTER LX
MRS. HODGES [IN ANSWER.] SAT. JULY 2.
MADDAM,
I return you an anser, as you wish me to doe. Master is acquented with no sitch man. I am shure no sitch ever came to our house. And master sturs very little out. He has no harte to stur out. For why? Your obstinacy makes um not care to see one another. Master’s birth-day never was kept soe before: for not a sole heere: and nothing but sikeing and sorrowin from master to think how it yused to bee.
I axed master, if soe bee he knowed sitch a man as one Captain Tomlinson? but said not whirfor I axed. He sed, No, not he.
Shure this is no trix nor forgery bruing against master by one Tomlinson—Won knows not what company you may have been forsed to keep, sen you went away, you knoe, Maddam; but Lundon is a pestilent plase; and that ’Squire Luvless is a devil (for all he is sitch a like gentleman to look to) as I hev herd every boddy say; and think as how you have found by thiss.