‘Alas, says the old lady, ‘that poor girl! I am afraid she will never be well.’

‘Well!’ says the elder brother, ‘how should Mrs. Betty be well? They say she is in love.’

‘I believe nothing of it,’ says the old gentlewoman.

‘I don’t know,’ says the eldest sister, ‘what to say to it; they have made such a rout about her being so handsome, and so charming, and I know not what, and that in her hearing too, that has turned the creature’s head, I believe, and who knows what possessions may follow such doings? For my part, I don’t know what to make of it.’

‘Why, sister, you must acknowledge she is very handsome,’ says the elder brother.’

‘Ay, and a great deal handsomer than you, sister,’ says Robin, ‘and that’s your mortification.’

‘Well, well, that is not the question,’ says his sister; ‘that girl is well enough, and she knows it well enough; she need not be told of it to make her vain.’

‘We are not talking of her being vain,’ says the elder brother, ‘but of her being in love; it may be she is in love with herself; it seems my sisters think so.’

‘I would she was in love with me,’ says Robin; ‘I’d quickly put her out of her pain.’

‘What d’ye mean by that, son,’ says the old lady; ‘how can you talk so?’

‘Why, madam,’ says Robin, again, very honestly, ‘do you think I’d let the poor girl die for love, and of one that is near at hand to be had, too?’

‘Fie, brother!’, says the second sister, ‘how can you talk so? Would you take a creature that has not a groat in the world?’

‘Prithee, child,’ says Robin, ‘beauty’s a portion, and good humour with it is a double portion; I wish thou hadst half her stock of both for thy portion.’ So there was her mouth stopped.

‘I find,’ says the eldest sister, ‘if Betty is not in love, my brother is. I wonder he has not broke his mind to Betty; I warrant she won’t say No.’

‘They that yield when they’re asked,’ says Robin, ‘are one step before them that were never asked to yield, sister, and two steps before them that yield before they are asked; and that’s an answer to you, sister.’

This fired the sister, and she flew into a passion, and said, things were some to that pass that it was time the wench, meaning me, was out of the family; and but that she was not fit to be turned out, she hoped her father and mother would consider of it as soon as she could be removed.

Robin replied, that was business for the master and mistress of the family, who where not to be taught by one that had so little judgment as his eldest sister.

It ran up a great deal farther; the sister scolded, Robin rallied and bantered, but poor Betty lost ground by it extremely in the family. I heard of it, and I cried heartily, and the old lady came up to me, somebody having told her that I was so much concerned about it. I complained to her, that it was very hard the doctors should pass such a censure upon me, for which they had no ground; and that it was still harder, considering the circumstances I was under in the family; that I hoped I had done nothing to lessen her esteem for me, or given any occasion for the bickering between her sons and daughters, and I had more need to think of a coffin than of being in love, and begged she would not let me suffer in her opinion for anybody’s mistakes but my own.