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When they
had looked about them a little, 'Well, Mrs. ----,' says the
Mayoress to my nurse, 'and pray which is the little lass that
intends to be a gentlewoman?' I heard her, and I was terribly
frighted at first, though I did not know why neither; but Mrs.
Mayoress comes up to me. 'Well, miss,' says she, 'and what
are you at work upon?' The word miss was a language that
had hardly been heard of in our school, and I wondered what
sad name it was she called me. However, I stood up, made a
curtsy, and she took my work out of my hand, looked on it,
and said it was very well; then she took up one of the hands.
'Nay,' says she, 'the child may come to be a gentlewoman for
aught anybody knows; she has a gentlewoman's hand,' says she.
This pleased me mightily, you may be sure; but Mrs. Mayoress
did not stop there, but giving me my work again, she put her
hand in her pocket, gave me a shilling, and bid me mind my
work, and learn to work well, and I might be a gentlewoman
for aught she knew.

Now all this while my good old nurse, Mrs. Mayoress, and all
the rest of them did not understand me at all, for they meant
one sort of thing by the word gentlewoman, and I meant quite
another; for alas! all I understood by being a gentlewoman was
to be able to work for myself, and get enough to keep me
without that terrible bugbear going to service, whereas they
meant to live great, rich and high, and I know not what.

Well, after Mrs. Mayoress was gone, her two daughters came
in, and they called for the gentlewoman too, and they talked
a long while to me, and I answered them in my innocent way;
but always, if they asked me whether I resolved to be a
gentlewoman, I answered Yes. At last one of them asked me
what a gentlewoman was? That puzzled me much; but,
however, I explained myself negatively, that it was one that
did not go to service, to do housework. They were pleased
to be familiar with me, and like my little prattle to them, which,
it seems, was agreeable enough to them, and they gave me
money too.

As for my money, I gave it all to my mistress-nurse, as I called
her, and told her she should have all I got for myself when I
was a gentlewoman, as well as now. By this and some other
of my talk, my old tutoress began to understand me about what
I meant by being a gentlewoman, and that I understood by it
no more than to be able to get my bread by my own work; and
at last she asked me whether it was not so.

I told her, yes, and insisted on it, that to do so was to be a
gentlewoman; 'for,' says I, 'there is such a one,' naming a
woman that mended lace and washed the ladies' laced-heads;

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