19 February 1787 – 25 February 1787

This morning I Proposed to my fellow travellers that we should begin our journey on foot. The wonderment with which they heard a proposal so new was diverting: but they all agreed to it; and though they declared that my predecessor, Mrs. Haggerdorn, would have thought the person fit for Bedlam who should have suggested such plan, no one could find any real objection, and off we set, ordering the coach to proceed slowly after us. The weather was delightful, and the enterprise served to shorten and enliven the expedition, and pleased them all, Mr. Turbulent began, almost immediately, an attack about his colonel: upon quite a new ground, yet as restless and earnest as upon the old one. He now reproached my attention to him, protesting I talked to him continually, and spun out into an hour’s discourse what might have been said in three minutes. “And was it my spinning?” I could not forbear saying. “Yes, ma’am: for you might have dropped it.” “How?—by not answering when spoken to?” “By not talking to him, ma’am, more than to any one else.” “And pray, Mr. Turbulent, solve me, then, this difficulty; what choice has a poor female with whom she may converse? Must she not, in company as in dancing, take up with those who choose to take up with her?” He was staggered by this question, and while he wavered how to answer it, I pursued my little advantage— “No man, Mr. Turbulent, has any cause to be flattered that a woman talks with him, while it is only in reply; for though he may come, go, address or neglect, and do as he will,—she, let her think and wish what she may, must only follow as he leads.” He protested, with great warmth, he never heard any thing so proudly said in Ins life. But I would not retract. “And now, ma’am,” he continued, “how wondrous intimate you are grown! After such averseness to a meeting—such struggles to avoid him; what am I to think of the sincerity of that pretended reluctance?” “You must think the truth,” said I, “that it was not the colonel, but the equerry, I wished to avoid; that it was not the individual, but the official necessity of receiving company, that I wished to escape.”