ll-health, and this was to some extent aggravated by intense boredom,
although of that boredom she wrote good-humouredly enough.

"I don't believe you expect to hear from me so soon, if I remember you
did not so much as desire it, but I will not be so nice to quarrel with
you on that point; perhaps you would laugh at that delicacy, which is,
however, an attendant of a tender friendship," she wrote to her husband
from Hinchinbrooke at the beginning of December, 1712.

"I opened the closet where I expected to find so many books; to my great
disappointment there were only some few pieces of the law, and folios of
mathematics; my Lord Hinchinbrook and Mr. Twiman having disposed of the
rest. But as there is no affliction, no more than no happiness, without
alloy, I discovered an old trunk of papers, which to my great diversion
I found to be the letters of the first Earl of Sandwich; and am in hopes
that those from his lady will tend much to my edification, being the
most extraordinary lessons of economy that ever I read in my life. To
the glory of your father, I find that _his_ looked upon him as destined
to be the honour of the family.

"I walked yesterday two hours on the terrace. These are the most
considerable events that have happened in your absence; excepting that a
good-natured robin red-breast kept me company almost all the afternoon
with so much good humour and humanity as gives me faith for the piece of
charity ascribed to these little creatures in the Children in the Wood,
which I have hitherto thought only a poetical ornament to that history.

"I expect a letter next post to tell me you are well in London and that
your business will not detain you long from her that cannot be happy
without you."

Even in these early days of marriage Montagu seemed to have no love for
domestic life, and often he stayed in London when he could have been in
the country with his wife, or had her with him in town. "As much as you
say I love the town, if you think it necessary for your interest to stay
some time here, I would not advise you to neglect a certainty for an
uncertainty? but I believe if you pass the Christmas here, great matters
will be expected from your hospitality: however, you are a better judge
than I am." So Lady Mary wrote from Hinchinbrooke in the first week of
December. She did not disguise from him the tedium of her existence.

"I continue indifferently well, and endeavour as much as I can to
preserve