Sunday Night, July 16

My Dearest Friend,

Why should you permit a mind, so much devoted to your service, to labour under such an impatience as you must know it would labour under, for want of an answer to a letter of such consequence to you, and therefore to me, as was mine of Thursday night?⁠—Rogers told me, on Thursday, you were so ill; your letter sent by him was so melancholy!⁠—Yet you must be ill indeed, if you could not write something to such a letter; were it but a line, to say you would write as soon as you could. Sure you have received it. The master of your nearest post-office will pawn his reputation that it went safe: I gave him particular charge of it.

God send me good news of your health, of your ability to write; and then I will chide you⁠—indeed I will⁠—as I never yet did chide you.

I suppose your excuse will be, that the subject required consideration⁠—Lord! my dear, so it might; but you have so right a mind, and the matter in question is so obvious, that you could not want half an hour to determine.⁠—Then you intended, probably, to wait Collins’s call for your letter as on tomorrow!⁠—Suppose something were to happen, as it did on Friday, that he should not be able to go to town tomorrow?⁠—How, child, could you serve me so!⁠—I know not how to leave off scolding you!

Dear, honest Collins, make haste: he will: he will. He sets out, and travels all night: for I have told him, that the dearest friend I have in the world has it in her own choice to be happy, and to make me so; and that the letter he will bring from her will assure it to me.

I have ordered him to go directly (without stopping at the Saracen’s-head-inn) to you at your lodgings. Matters are now in so good a way, that he safely may.

Your expected letter is ready written I hope: if it can be not, he will call for it at your hour.

You can’t be so happy as you deserve to be: but I doubt not that you will be as happy as you can; that is, that you will choose to put yourself instantly into Lady Betty’s protection. If you would not have the wretch for your own sake; have him you must, for mine, for your family’s, for your honour’s, sake!⁠—Dear, honest Collins, make haste! make haste! and relieve the impatient heart of my beloved’s