rants to very little
purpose. You cannot imagine how cruel they are to me, and yet will
persuade me 'tis for my good. I know they mean it so, and therefore say
nothing on't, I admit, and sigh to think those are not here that would
be kinder to me. But you were cruel yourself when you seemed to
apprehend I might oblige you to make good your last offer. Alack! if I
could purchase the empire of the world at that rate, I should think it
much too dear; and though, perhaps, I am too unhappy myself ever to make
anybody else happy, yet, sure, I shall take heed that my misfortunes may
not prove infectious to my friends. You ask counsel of a person that is
very little able to give it. I cannot imagine whither you should go,
since this journey is broke. You must e'en be content to stay at home, I
think, and see what will become of us, though I expect nothing of good;
and, sure, you never made a truer remark in your life than that all
changes are for the worse. Will it not stay your father's journey too?
Methinks it should. For God's sake write me all that you hear or can
think of, that I may have something to entertain myself withal. I have a
scurvy head that will not let me write longer.

I am your.

[Directed]--

For Mrs. Paynter, at her house
in Bedford Street, next ye Goate,
In Covent Garden.

_Letter 21._--Sir Thomas Osborne is Dorothy's "Cousin Osborne" here
mentioned. He was, you remember, a suitor for Dorothy's hand, but has
now married Lady Bridget Lindsay.

The "squire that is as good as a knight," is, in all probability,
Richard Bennet. Thomas Bennet, his father, an alderman of the city of
London, had bought a seat near Cambridge, called Babraham or Babram,
that had belonged to Sir Toby Palavicini. The alderman appears to have
been a loyal citizen, as he was created baronet in 1660. His two sons,
Sir Richard and Sir Thomas, married daughters of Sir Lavinius Munck;--so
we need not accuse Dorothy of irretrievably breaking hearts by her
various refusals.

When Dorothy says she will "sit like the lady of the lobster, and give
audience at Babram," she simply means that she will sit among
magnificent surroundings unsuited to her modest disposition. The "lady"
of a lobster is a curious-shaped substance in the head of that fish,
bearing some distant resemblance to the figure of a woman. The
expression is still known to fishmongers and others, who also refer to
the "Adam and Eve" in a shrimp, a kindred formati