Everything is smart, everything is elegant,
and we admire them all. The short candlesticks are short enough. I am
now writing with those upon the table; Mrs. U. is reading opposite,
and they suit us both exactly. With the money that you have in hand,
you may purchase, my dear, at your most convenient time, a tea-urn;
that which we have at present having never been handsome, and being
now old and patched. A parson once, as he walked across the parlour,
pushed it down with his belly, and it never perfectly recovered
itself. We want likewise a tea-waiter, meaning, if you please, such
a one as you may remember to have seen at the Hall, a wooden one.
To which you may add, from the same fund, three or four yards of
yard-wide muslin, wherewithal to make neckcloths for my worship. If
after all these disbursements anything should be left at the bottom
of the purse, we shall be obliged to you if you will expend it in the
purchase of silk pocket-handkerchiefs. There, my precious--I think I
have charged thee with commissions in plenty.
You neither must nor shall deny us the pleasure of sending to you
such small matters as we do. As to the partridges, you may recollect
possibly, when I remind you of it, that I never eat them; they refuse
to pass my stomach; and Mrs. Unwin rejoiced in receiving them only
because she could pack them away to you--therefore never lay us under
any embargoes of this kind, for I tell you beforehand, that we are
both incorrigible. My beloved Cousin, the first thing that I open my
eyes upon in a morning, is it not the bed in which you have laid me?
Did you not, in our old dismal parlour at Olney, give me the tea on
which I breakfast?--the chocolate that I drank at noon, and the table
at which I dine?--the everything, in short, that I possess in the
shape of convenience, is it not all from you? and is it possible,
think you, that we should either of us overlook an opportunity of
making such a tiny acknowledgement of your kindness? Assure yourself
that never, while my name is Giles Gingerbread, will I dishonour my
glorious ancestry, and my illustrious appellation, by so unworthy a
conduct.
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