if he was mighty merry.
He talked a lot of rambling stuff to his sister and to me,
sometimes of one thing, sometimes of another, on purpose
to amuse his sister, and every now and then would turn it
upon the old story, directing it to me. ‘Poor Mrs. Betty,’ says
he, ‘it is a sad thing to be in love; why, it has reduced you
sadly.’ At last I spoke a little. ‘I am glad to see you so merry,
sir,’ says I; ‘but I think the doctor might have found something
better to do than to make his game at his patients. If I had
been ill of no other distemper, I know the proverb too well to
have let him come to me.’ ‘What proverb?’ says he, ‘Oh! I
remember it now. What–
“Where love is the case,
The doctor’s an ass.”
Is not that it, Mrs. Betty?’ I smiled and said nothing. ‘Nay,’
says he, ‘I think the effect has proved it to be love, for it
seems the doctor has been able to do you but little service;
you mend very slowly, they say. I doubt there’s somewhat in
it, Mrs. Betty; I doubt you are sick of the incurables, and that
is love.’ I smiled and said, ‘No, indeed, sir, that’s none of my
distemper.’
We had a deal of such discourse, and sometimes others that
signified as little. By and by he asked me to sing them a song,
at which I smiled, and said my singing days were over. At last
he asked me if he should play upon his flute to me; his sister
said she believe it would hurt me, and that my head could
not bear it. I bowed, and said, No, it would not hurt me.
‘And, pray, madam.’ said I, ‘do not hinder it; I love the music
of the flute very much.’ Then his sister said, ‘Well, do, then,
brother.’ With that he pulled out the key of his closet. ‘Dear
sister,’ says he, ‘I am very lazy; do step to my closet and fetch
my flute; it lies in such a drawer,’ naming a place where he
was sure it was not, that she might be a little while a-looking
for it.
As soon as she was gone, he related the whole story to me
of the discourse his brother had about me, and of his pushing
it at him, and his concern about it, which was the reason of
his contriving this visit to me. I assured him I had never
opened my mouth either to his brother or to anybody else.
I told him the dreadful exigence I was in; that my love to him,
and his offering to have me forget that affection and remove
it to another, had thrown me down; and that I had a thousand
times wished I might die rather than recover, and to have the
same circumstances to struggle with as I had before, and that
his backwardness to life had been the great reason of the
slowness of my recovering. I added that I foresaw that as soon
as I was well, I must quit the family, and that as for marrying
his brother, I abhorred the thoughts of it after what had been
my case with him, and that he might depend upon it I would
never see his brother again upon that subject; that if he would
break all his vows and oaths and engagements with me, be
that between his conscience and his honour and himself; but
he should never be able to say that I, whom he had persuaded
to call myself his wife, and who had given him the liberty to
use me as a wife, was not as faithful to him as a wife ought to
be, whatever he might be to me.
He was going to reply, and had said that he was sorry I could
not be persuaded, and was a-going to say more, but he heard
his sister a-coming, and so did I; and yet I forced out these
few words as a reply, that I could never be persuaded to love
one brother and marry another. He shook his head and said,