s dozing after dinner, as a
healthy country gentleman should: to mislay his spectacles for him,
and steal away his newspaper when he wants to read it; to ruin him with
tailors' bills, mantua-makers' bills, tutors' bills, as you all of you
do: to break his rest of nights when you have the impudence to fall
ill, and when he would sleep undisturbed but that your silly mother will
never be quiet for half an hour; and when Joan can't sleep, what use,
pray, is there in Darby putting on his nightcap? Every trifling ailment
that any one of you has had, has scared her so that I protest I have
never been tranquil; and, were I not the most long-suffering creature in
the world, would have liked to be rid of the whole pack of you. And
now, forsooth, that you have grown out of childhood, long petticoats,
chicken-pox, small-pox, whooping-cough, scarlet fever, and the other
delectable accidents of puerile life, what must that unconscionable
woman propose but to arrange the south rooms as a nursery for possible
grandchildren, and set up the Captain with a wife, and make him marry
early because we did! He is too fond, she says, of Brookes's and
Goosetree's when he is in London. She has the perversity to hint that,
though an entree to Carlton House may be very pleasant, 'tis very
dangerous for a young gentleman: and she would have Miles live away from
temptation, and sow his wild oats, and marry, as we did. Marry! my dear
creature, we had no business to marry at all! By the laws of common
prudence and duty, I ought to have backed out of my little engagement
with Miss Theo (who would have married somebody else), and taken a rich
wife. Your Uncle John was a parson and couldn't fight, poor Charley was
a boy at school, and your grandfather was too old a man to call me to
account with sword and pistol. I repeat there never was a more foolish
match in the world than ours, and our relations were perfectly right
in being angry with us. What are relations made for, indeed, but to be
angry and find fault? When Hester marries, do you mind, Master George,
to quarrel with her if she does not take a husband of your selecting.
When George has got his living, after being senior wrangler and fellow
of his college, Miss Hester, do you toss up your little nose at the
young lady he shall fancy. As for you, my little Theo, I can't part with
your. You must not quit your old father; for he likes you to play Haydn
to him, and peel his walnuts after dinner.

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