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cold, much better in health, sitting up and awaiting us.
January 21, 1679.
Uncle Rawson came home to-day in a great passion, and, calling me to him, he asked me if I too was going to turn Quaker, and fall to prophesying?
Whereat I was not a little amazed; and when I asked him what he did mean, he said: ‘Your brother Leonard hath gone off to them, and I dare say you will follow, if one of the ranters should take it into his head that you would make him a proper wife, or company-keeper, for there's never an honest marriage among them.’
Then looking sternly at me, he asked me why I did keep this matter from him, and thus allow the foolish young man to get entangled in the snares of Satan.
Whereat I was so greatly grieved, that I could answer never a word.
‘You may well weep,’ said my uncle, ‘for you have done wickedly.
As to your brother, he will do well to keep where he is in the plantations; for if he come hither a teeing and thouing of me, I will spare him never a whit; and if I do not chastise him myself, it will be because the constable can do it better at the cart-tail.
As the Lord lives, I had rather he had turned Turk!’
I tried to say a word for my brother, but he cut me straightway short, bidding me not to mention his name again in his presence.
Poor me!
I have none here now to whom I can speak freely, Rebecca having gone to her sister's at Weymouth.
My young cousin Grindall is below, with his college 