Well, I will be good, and endeavour to be patient. I will eat, and drink, and sleep, and forget not only my own cares, but cease to feel and be angry at the sight of oppressed innocence. I will grow fat, and say with Miss Flint and her tribe, “What! are not the poor and friendless made for our use?” I will do any thing rather than grieve my Lucy; but you have, my dear girl, your whims and crotchets to correct, as well as I my petulancies and opinions to govern. What has given you the notion that I am starved at Tarefield? Please to understand that Miss Flint prides herself on the goodness and abundance of her table; and although she has not yet acquired a relish for a dinner of herbs seasoned by love and peace, she has an excellent appetite for the stalled ox. Consequently, as the song says, “Each day has the spit and the pot, With plenty of pudding and pie.” Therefore be assured, that if to “pine all the day is my lot,” it is not because I am hungry or ill fed. No, no: it is the sovereign will of Miss Lucretia Flint, that there should be no want of any thing at Tarefield but _contentment_; and as she can live without it, why should not others? Yesterday morning Mrs. Allen and myself, escorted by the baronet, encountered Malcolm in our ramble before breakfast. He was in rustic attire, and had a scythe slung on his shoulder. He joined us with a face glowing with health and exercise; and with the utmost cheerfulness accosting us, he said he had been working two hours in the meadow. “It is not remote,” added he, “and if you love nature’s perfumes, Miss Cowley, I advise you to lengthen your walk. You will find the poets need not the aid of fiction to heighten their description of a _hay-field_, whatever they may do in describing hay-makers. Were I poetically decorated, I would offer you my arm, but in this trim.”——I interrupted him by bidding him lead the way, and be content without rivaling a birth-night beau.