Previous - Next

time, with the very apprehension of its being to be so at last.

When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be
angry with me. 'And what would you have?' says she; 'don't
I tell you that you shall not go to service till your are bigger?'
'Ay,' said I, 'but then I must go at last.' 'Why, what?' said she;
'is the girl mad? What would you be -- a gentlewoman?'
'Yes,' says I, and cried heartily till I roared out again.

This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be
sure it would. 'Well, madam, forsooth,' says she, gibing at me,
'you would be a gentlewoman; and pray how will you come to
be a gentlewoman? What! will you do it by your fingers' end?'

'Yes,' says I again, very innocently.

'Why, what can you earn?' says she; 'what can you get at your
work?'

'Threepence,' said I, 'when I spin, and fourpence when I work
plain work.'

'Alas! poor gentlewoman,' said she again, laughing, 'what will
that do for thee?'

'It will keep me,' says I, 'if you will let me live with you.' And
this I said in such a poor petitioning tone, that it made the poor
woman's heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.

'But,' says she, 'that will not keep you and buy you clothes
too; and who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?' says
she, and smiled all the while at me.

'I will work harder, then,' says I, 'and you shall have it all.'

'Poor child! it won't keep you,' says she; 'it will hardly keep
you in victuals.'

'Then I will have no victuals,' says I, again very innocently;
'let me but live with you.'

'Why, can you live without victuals?' says she.

'Yes,' again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure,
and still I cried heartily.

I had no policy in all this; you may easily see it was all nature;
but it was joined with so much innocence and so much passion
that, in short, it set the good motherly creature a-weeping too,
and she cried at last as fast as I did, and then took me and led
me out of the teaching-room. 'Come,' says she, 'you shan't
go to service; you shall live with me'; and this pacified me
for the present.

Some time after this, she going to wait on the Mayor, and
talking of such things as belonged to her business, at last my
story came up, and my good nurse told Mr. Mayor the whole
tale. He was so pleased with it, that he would call his lady
and his two daughters to hear it, and it made mirth enough
among them, you may be sure.

However, not a week had passed over, but on a sudden comes
Mrs. Mayoress and her two daughters to the house to see my
old nurse, and to see her school and the children.

Previous - Next