So the summer passed, and “most of our discourse,” he admits, “is about our keeping a coach the next year, which pleases my wife mightily; and if I continue as able as now, it will save me money.” At the beginning of the new year Will Griffin was ordered to make fresh inquiries about the most necessary coach-house, but nothing seems to have been done until the autumn. Then Pepys, more or less it would seem on the spur of the moment, chose a coach for himself, and immediately disliked it. No one seems to have given him the same advice. Some ladies, for instance, Mrs. Pepys amongst them, preferred the large old-fashioned coaches. Others wanted the latest thing from Paris. Says Mrs. Flirt in _The Gentleman Dancing-Master_: “But take notice, I will have no little, dirty, second-hand chariot, new furnished, but a large, sociable, well-painted coach; nor will I keep it till it be as well-known as myself, and it comes to be called Flirt-coach.” Her friend, Monsieur Paris, shrugs his shoulders. “’Tis very well,” says he, “you must have your great, gilt, fine painted coach. I’m sure they are grown so common already amongst you that ladies of quality begin to take up with hackneys again.” It was felt, no doubt, that fashion in carriages as in everything else would speedily change. Mr. Pepys must have found considerable difficulty in making up his mind. The new chariots were small, light and, so far as he knew, most fashionable; but possibly they were not quite to his taste, and equally possibly they might not be fashionable in ten years’ time. Also they perhaps lacked the solid dignity of the older carriages, and were less likely to attract public attention—two important considerations. In the end, however, he seems to have chosen a large coach of the old style. Mr. Povey saw it, and poor Pepys knew at once that a dreadful mistake had been made. “He and I ... talk of my coach,” runs the Diary for 30th October, “and I got him to go and see it, where he finds most infinite fault with it, both as to being out of fashion and heavy, with so good reason, that I am mightily glad of his having corrected me in it; and so I do resolve to have one of his build, and with his advice, both in coach and horses, he being the fittest man in the world for it.”