Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/309

Rh the same for this fortnight past, and am neither better nor worse. However, I resolve to return on the first mending of the weather; these three last days there being as violent a storm as I have known, which still continues. We have been told my lord Mountcashell is dead at Drogheda, but believe it to be a lie. However, he is so tender, and affects so much vigour and fatigue, that we have been in pain about him.

I had a letter two days ago, which cost me six shillings and four pence; it consisted of the probate of a will in Leicestershire, and of two enclosed letters, and was beyond the weight of letters franked. When I went a lad to my mother, after the revolution, she brought me acquainted with a family where there was a daughter with whom I was acquainted. My prudent mother was afraid I should be in love with her; but when I went to London, she married an innkeeper in Loughborow, in that county, by whom she had several children. The old mother died, and left all that she had to her daughter aforesaid, separate from her husband. This woman (my mistress with a pox) left several children, who are all dead but one daughter, Anne by name. This Anne, for it must be she, about seven years ago writ to me from London, to tell me she was daughter of Betty Jones, for that was my mistress's name, till she was married to one Perkins, innkeeper, at the George in Loughborow, as I said before. The subject of the girl's letter was, that a young lady of good fortune was