t their business to treat
upon those subjects. By this means, you will be usefully employed in
your own way, which may turn to good account to us both, and to the
dear children, which it may please God to bestow upon us."

"You don't expect, Sir, any thing regular, or digested from me."

"I don't, my dear. Let your fancy and your judgment be both employed,
and I require no method; for I know, in your easy, natural way, that
would be a confinement, which would cramp your genius, and give what
you write a stiff, formal air, that I might expect in a pedagogue, but
not in my Pamela."

"Well, but, Sir, although I may write nothing to the purpose, yet if
Lady Davers desires it, you will allow me to transmit what I shall
write to her, when you have perused it yourself? For your good sister
is so indulgent to my scribble, she will expect to be always hearing
from me; and this way I shall oblige her ladyship while I obey her
brother."

"With all my heart," he was pleased to say.

So, my lady, I shall now-and-then pay my respects to you in the
writing way, though I must address myself, it seems, to my dearest Mr.
B.; and I hope to be received on these my own terms, since they are
your brother's also, and, at the same time, such as will convince you,
how much I wish to approve myself, to the best of my poor ability,
_your ladyship's most obliged sister, and humble servant_,

P.B.

LETTER XC

My dearest Mr. B.,

I have been considering of your commands, in relation to Mr. Locke's
book, and since you are pleased to give me time to acquit myself
of the task, I shall beg to include in a little book my humble
sentiments, as I did to Lady Davers, in that I shewed you in relation
to the plays I had seen. And since you confine me not to time or
place, I may be three or four years in completing it, because I shall
reserve some subjects to my further experience in children's ways and
tempers, and in order to benefit myself by the good instructions I
shall receive from your delightful conversation, in that compass of
time, if God spare us to one another: and then it will, moreover, be
still worthier of the perusal of the most honoured and best beloved of
all my correspondents, much honoured and beloved as they all are.

I must needs say, my dear Mr. B., that this is a subject to which
I was always particularly attentive; and among the charities your
bountiful heart permits me to dispense to the poor and indigent,
I have