Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/204

192

SIR,

SHOULD before this have returned you thanks for the favour of your letter, but that I feared too quick a correspondence might be troublesome to you. When I receive a very great honour and favour, I think it ungenerous immediately to sue for another, though I have the highest sense of the obligation.

You say you want me to assert your right over our sex; and your letter is so powerful a bribe, that I fear I shall give them up to you, though I am a great asserter of their rights and privileges. As to the employments you assign me, I readily undertake them all, though I know myself very unfit for some of them; but I have such high examples on my side, that I am not at all ashamed of pretending to more than I can do. I think I can be a very good nurse; you shall teach me to be your companion; and, for a housekeeper, I will assure you I know to a farthing the lowest price of every thing, though I am ever so ignorant of the matter.

Mrs. Pendarves has, as you say, forsaken us: by my lord Lansdown's death, her brother Mr. Granville is become possessed of eight hundred pound a year, and twenty thousand pound in money; which was so settled that my lord Lansdown could not touch it. Mr. Granville is a man of great worth, and a very kind brother, and has it now in his power to provide for their sister miss Granville, whom Mrs. Pendarves is extremely fond of: this you may imagine has