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194 that of Mrs. Busy, a widow, who lost her husband in her thirtieth year, and has since passed her time at the manor-house, in the government of her children, and the management of the estate.

Mrs. Busy was married at eighteen, from a boarding-school, where she had passed her time like other young ladies in needle-work, with a few intervals of dancing and reading. When she became a bride she spent one winter with her husband in town, where having no idea of any conversation beyond the formalities of a visit, she found nothing to engage her passions: and when she had been one night at court, and two at an opera, and seen the Monument, the Tombs, and the Tower, she concluded that London had nothing more to shew, and wondered that when women had once seen the world they could not be content to stay at home. She therefore went willingly to the ancient seat, and for some years studied housewifery under Mr. Busy's mother, with so much assiduity, that the old lady, when she died, bequeathed her a caudle-cup, a soup-dish, two beakers, and a chest of table-linen spun by herself.

Mr. Busy, finding the economical qualities of his lady, resigned his affairs wholly into her hands, and devoted his life to his pointers and his hounds. He never visited his estates, but to destroy the partridges or foxes; and often committed such devastations in the rage of pleasure, that some of his tenants refused to hold their lands at the usual rent. Their landlady persuaded them to be satisfied, and entreated her husband to dismiss his dogs, with many exact calculations of the ale drunk by his companions, and corn consumed by the horses, and remonstrances against the insolence of the huntsman, and the