DUTY.--Oh! you crow, do you? Pray, can you deny that your sitting so quiet at work was owing to its raining heavily all the forenoon, and indeed till dinner-time, so that nothing would have stirred out that could help it, save a duck or a goose? I trow, if it had been a fine day, by noon there would have been aching of the head, throbbing, shaking, and so forth, to make an apology for going out. EGOMET IPSE.--And whose head ever throbbed to go out when it rained, Mrs. Duty? DUTY.--_Answer not to me with a fool-born jest_, as your poor friend Erskine used to say to you when you escaped from his good advice under the fire of some silly pun. You smoke a cigar after dinner, and I never check you--drink tea, too, which is loss of time; and then, instead of writing me one other page, or correcting those you have written out, you rollick into the woods till you have not a dry thread about you; and here you sit writing down my words in your foolish journal instead of minding my advice. EGO.--Why, Mrs. Duty, I would as gladly be friends with [you] as Crabbe's[311] tradesman fellow with his conscience; but you should have some consideration with human frailty. DUTY.--Reckon not on that. But, however, good-night for the present. I would only recommend to you to think no thoughts in which I am not mingled--to read no books in which I have no concern--to write three sheets of botheration all the six days of the week _per diem_, and on the seventh to send them to the printer. Thus advising, I heartily bid you farewell. EGO.--Farewell, madam (exit Duty) and be d--d to ye for an unreasonable bitch! "The devil must be in this greedy gled!" as the Earl of Angus said to his hawk; "will she never be satisfied?"[312] I believe in my soul she is the very hag who haunted the merchant Abudah.[313] I'll have my great chest upstairs exorcised, but first I'll take a nap till supper, which must take place within ten minutes. _August_ 3.--Wrote half a task in the morning. From eleven till half-past eight in Selkirk taking precognitions about a _row_, and came home famished and tired. Now, Mrs. Duty, do you think there is no other Duty of the family but yourself? Or can the Sheriff-depute neglect his Duty, that the author may mind _his_? The thing cannot be; the people of Selkirk must have justice as well as the people of England books. So the two Duties may go pull caps about it. My conscience is clear. _August_ 4.--Wrote to Miss Edgeworth on her sister's marriage, which consumed the better part of the morning. I must read for Marengo. _Item_, I must look at the pruning. _Item_, at the otter hunt; but my hope is constant to make up a good day's task notwithstanding. Failed in finding the otter, and was tired and slept, and did but a poor day's work.