against him: they bring me all he says of me, and, I believe, make it worse out of roguery. No, 'tis not your pen is bewitched, madam Stella, but your old scrawling, splay-foot, pot-hooks[1], s, ſ, ay that's it: there the s, ſ, ſ, there, there, that's exact. Farewell, &c.
Our fine weather is gone, and I doubt we shall have a rainy journey to day. Faith, 'tis shaving day, and I have much to do.
When Stella says her pen is bewitched, it was only because there was a hair in it. You know the fellow they call God-help-it had the same thoughts of his wife, and for the same reason. I think this is very well observed, and I unfolded the letter to tell you it.
Cut off those two notes above; and see the nine pounds endorsed, and receive the other; and send me word how my accounts stand, that they may be adjusted by Nov. 1. Pray be very particular: but the twenty pounds I lend you is not to be included; so make no blunder. I won't wrong you; nor you shan't wrong me; that's the short. O Lord, how stout Presto is of late! But he loves MD more than his life a thousand times, for all his stoutness; tell him that; and I'll swear it, as hope saved, ten millions of times, &c. &c.
I open my letter once more to tell Stella, that if she does not use exercise after her waters, it will lose all the effects of them: I should not live, if I did not take all opportunities of walking. Pray, pray, do this to oblige poor Presto.
- ↑ These words in Italicks, and the two effes that follow, are miserably scrawled, in imitation of Stella's hand.
