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But before night I hear the contrary, both by letters of my owne and messengers thence, that they were all well of our side and no enemy appears yet, and that the Royall Katherine is come to the fleete, and likely to prove as good a ship as any the King hath, of which I am heartily glad, both for Christopher Pett's sake and Captain Teddiman that is in her. 15th.
Up, and more letters still from Sir W. Coventry about more fire-ships, and so Sir W. Batten and I to the office, where Bruncker come to us, who is just now going to Chatham upon a desire of Commissioner Pett's, who is in a very fearful stink for fear of the Dutch, and desires help for God and the King and kingdom's sake. So Bruncker goes down, and Sir J. Minnes also, from Gravesend.
I'm going to settle down like a limpet. I hope I shall be living in luxury on you twenty years from now. Is this the room?" Mr. Pett opened the drawing-room door. A small hairy object sprang from a basket and stood yapping in the middle of the room. This was Aida, Mrs. Pett's Pomeranian. Mr. Pett, avoiding the animal coldly, for he disliked it, ushered Jimmy into the room.
This sort of thing had been growing worse and worse ever since his marriage two years previously. There was a strong literary virus in Mrs. Pett's system. She not only wrote voluminously herself the name Nesta Ford Pett is familiar to all lovers of sensational fiction but aimed at maintaining a salon.
Pett's yacht is; and so all into the barge again, and so to Woolwich, on board the Rose-bush, Captain Brown's' ship, that is brother-in-law to Sir W. Batten, where we had a very fine dinner, dressed on shore, and great mirth and all things successfull; the first time I ever carried my wife a-ship-board, as also my boy Wayneman, who hath all this day been called young Pepys, as Sir W. Pen's boy young Pen.
Pett's acquaintance, she came down to see how things were going. She was well satisfied with what she saw. A slight strain which she perceived in the atmosphere she attributed to embarrassment natural to the situation. She looked at Jimmy enquiringly. Mrs. Pett had not informed her of Mr. Pett's telephone call, so Jimmy, she realised, had to be explained to her.
Six brilliant youths, mostly novelists who had not yet started and poets who were about to begin, cluttered up Mr. Pett's rooms on this fair June morning, while he, clutching his Sunday paper, wandered about, finding, like the dove in Genesis, no rest.
Pett's, and there eat some fruit and drank, and so to boat again, and to Deptford, calling there about the business of my house only, and so home, where by appointment I found Mr. Coventry, Sir W. Batten, and Mr. Waith met at Sir W. Batten's, and thither I met, and so agreed upon a way of answering my Lord Treasurer's letter. Here I found Mr.
Pett's; and there, beyond expectation, he did present me with a Japan cane, with a silver head, and his wife sent me by him a ring, with a Woolwich stone; The late Mr. Tennant, the geologist, of the Strand, had a collection of such stones. In the British Museum is a nodule of globular or Egyptian jasper, which, in its fracture, bears a striking resemblance to the well-known portrait of Chaucer.
"We'll settle all that when you've handed the money over," said Miss Pett. "I haven't counted it yet." There was a certain unwillingness in Christopher Pett's manner as he slowly produced a stout pocket-book and took from it a thick wad of bank-notes. He pushed this across to his aunt, with a tiny heap of silver and copper. "Well, I'm trusting to you, you know," he said a little doubtfully.
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