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natural affability which we have before celebrated, she wore aconstrained severity on her countenance, which was so disagreeable toMr Jones, that he resolved, however late, to quit the house thatevening.He did indeed account somewhat unfairly for this sudden change; forbesides some hard and unjust surmises concerning female fickleness andmutability, he began to suspect that he owed this want of civility tohis want of horses; a sort of animals which, as they dirty no sheets,are thought in inns to pay better for their beds than their riders,and are therefore considered as the more desirable company; but MrsWhitefield, to do her justice, had a much more liberal way ofthinking. She was perfectly well-bred, and could be very civil to agentleman, though he walked on foot. In reality, she looked on ourheroe as a sorry scoundrel, and therefore treated him as such, forwhich not even Jones himself, had he known as much as the reader,could have blamed her; nay, on the contrary, he must have approved herconduct, and have esteemed her the more for the disrespect showntowards himself. This is indeed a most aggravating circumstance, whichattends depriving men unjustly of their reputation; for a man who isconscious of having an ill character, cannot justly be angry withthose who neglect and slight him; but ought rather to despise such asaffect his conversation, unless where a perfect intimacy must haveconvinced them that their friend's character hath been falsely andinjuriously aspersed.This was not, however, the case of Jones; for as he was a perfectstranger to the truth, so he was with good reason offended at thetreatment he received. He therefore paid his reckoning and departed,highly against the will of Mr Partridge, who having remonstrated muchagainst it to no purpose, at last condescended to take up his knapsackand to attend his friend.Chapter ix.Containing several dialogues between Jones and Partridge, concerninglove, cold, hunger, and other matters; with the lucky and narrowescape of Partridge, as he was on the very brink of making a fataldiscovery to his friend.The shadows began now to descend larger from the high mountains; thefeathered creation had betaken themselves to their rest. Now thehighest order of mortals were sitting down to their dinners, and thelowest order to their suppers. In a word, the clock struck five justas Mr Jones took his leave of Gloucester; an hour at which (as it wasnow mid-winter) the dirty fingers of Night would have drawn her sablecurtain over the universe, had not the moon forbid her, who now, witha face as broad and as red as those of some jolly mortals, who, likeher, turn night into day, began to rise from her bed, where she hadslumbered away the day, in order to sit up all night. Jones had nottravelled far before he paid his compliments to that beautiful planet,and, turning to his companion, asked him if he had ever beheld sodelicious an evening? Partridge making no ready answer to hisquestion, he proceeded to comment on the beauty of the moon, andrepeated some passages from Milton, who hath certainly excelled allother poets in his description of the heavenly luminaries. He then