Soon after this my elder sister, who in all the time of these exercises of mine had been at London, returned home, much troubled to find me a Quaker, a name of reproach and great contempt then, and she, being at London, had received, I suppose, the worst character of them. Yet though she disliked the people, her affectionate regard for me made her rather pity than despise me, and the more when she understood what hard usage I had met with.
The rest of the winter I spent in a lonesome solitary life, having none to converse with, none to unbosom myself unto, none to ask counsel of, none to seek relief from, but the Lord alone, who yet was more than all. And yet the company and society of faithful and judicious friends would, I thought, have been very welcome as well as helpful to me in my spiritual travail, in which I thought I made slow progress, my soul breathing after further attainments, the sense of which drew from me the following lines:
The winter tree
Resembles me,
Whose sap lies in its root:
The spring draws nigh;
As it, so I
Shall bud, I hope, and shoot.
At length it pleased the Lord to move Isaac Penington and his wife to make a visit to my father, and see how it fared with me; and very welcome they were to me, whatever they were to him; to whom I doubt not but they would have been more welcome had it not been for me.
They tarried with us all night, and much discourse they had with my father, both about the principles of truth in general, and me in particular, which I was not privy to. But one thing I remember I afterwards heard of, which was this:
When my father and I were at their house some months before, Mary Penington, in some discourse between them, had told him how hardly her husband’s father (Alderman Penington) had dealt with him about his hat; which my father (little then thinking that it would, and so soon too, be his own case) did very much censure the alderman for, wondering that so wise a man as he was should take notice of such a trivial thing as the putting off or keeping on a hat; and he spared not to blame him liberally for it.
This gave her a handle to take hold of him by; and having had an ancient acquaintance with him, and he having always had a high opinion of and respect for her, she, who was a woman of great wisdom, of ready speech, and of a well-resolved spirit, did press so close upon him with this home argument, that he was utterly at a loss how to defend himself.
After dinner next day, when they were ready to take coach to return home, she desired my father that, since my company was so little acceptable to him, he would give me leave to go and spend some time with them, where I should be sure to be welcome.
He was very unwilling I should go, and made many objections against it, all which she answered and removed so clearly, that not finding what excuse further to allege, he at length left it to me, and I soon turned the scale for going.
We were come to the coach-side before this was concluded on, and I was ready to step in, when one of my sisters privately put my father in mind that I had never a hat on. That somewhat startled him, for he did not think it fit I should go from home (and that so far and to stay abroad) without a hat. Wherefore he whispered to her to fetch me a hat, and he entertained them with some discourse in the meantime. But as soon as he saw the hat coning he would not stay till it came, lest I should put it on before him, but breaking off his discourse abruptly, took his leave of them, and hastened in before the hat was brought to me.