which were to her, no doubt, the strongest recommendation and marks of my being fit for her purpose. After a little time, in which my air, person and whole figure had undergone a strict examination, which I had, on my part, tried to render favourable to me, by primming, drawing up my neck, and setting my best looks, she advanced and spoke to me with the greatest demureness:
‘Sweetheart, do you want a place?’
‘Yes and please you’ (with a curtsey down to the ground).
Upon this she acquainted me that she was actually come to the office herself to look out for a servant; that she believed I might do, with a little of her instructions; that she could take my very looks for a sufficient character; that London was a very wicked, vile place; that she hop’d I would be tractable, and keep out of bad company; in short, she said all to me that an old experienced practitioner in town could think of, and which was much more than was necessary to take in an artless inexperienced country-maid, who was even afraid of becoming a wanderer about the streets, and therefore gladly jump’d at the first offer of a shelter, especially from so grave and matronlike a lady, for such my flattering fancy assured me this new mistress of mine was; I being actually hired under the nose of the good woman that kept the office, whose shrewd smiles and shrugs I could not help observing, and innocently interpreted them as marks of her being pleased at my getting into place so soon: but, as I afterwards came to know, these beldames understood one another very well, and this was a market where Mrs Brown, my mistress, frequently attended, on the watch for any fresh goods that might offer there, for the use of her customers, and her own profit.
Madam was, however, so well pleased with her bargain, that fearing, I presume, lest better advice or some accident might occasion my slipping through her fingers, she would officiously take me in a coach to my inn, where, calling herself for my box, it was, I being present, delivered without the least scruple of explanation as to where I was going.
This being over, she bid the coachman drive to a shop in St Paul’s Churchyard, where she bought a pair of gloves, which she gave me, and thence renewed her directions to the coachman to drive to her house in—Street, who accordingly landed us at her door, after I had been cheer’d up and entertain’d by the way with the most plausible flams, without one syllable from which I could conclude anything but that I was, by the greatest good luck, fallen into the hands of the kindest mistress, not to say friend, that the varsal world could afford; and accordingly I enter’d her doors with most complete confidence and exultation, promising myself that, as soon as I should be a little settled, I would acquaint Esther Davis with my rare good fortune.
You may be sure the good opinion of my place was not lessen’d by the appearance of a very handsome back parlour, into which I was led and which seemed to me magnificently furnished, who had never seen better rooms than the ordinary ones in inns upon the road. There were two gilt pierglasses, and a buffet, on which a few pieces of plates, set out to the most show, dazzled, and altogether persuaded me that I must be got into a very reputable family.
Here my mistress first began her part, with telling me that I must have good spirits, and learn to be free with her; that she had not taken me to be a common servant, to do domestic drudgery, but to be a kind of companion to her; and that if I would be a good girl, she would be more than twenty mothers for me; to all which I answered only by the profoundest and the awkwardest curtsies, and a few monosyllables, such as ‘yes! no! to be sure!’
Presently my mistress touch’d the bell, and in came a strapping maidservant, who had let us in. ‘Here, Martha,’ said Mrs Brown – ‘I have just hir’d this young woman to look after my linen; so step up and show her her chamber; and I charge you to use her with as much respect as you would myself, for I have taken a prodigious liking to her, and I do not know what I shall do for her.’
Martha, who was an arch-jade, and, being used to this decoy, had her cue perfect, made me a kind of half-curtsey and asked me to walk up with her; and accordingly show’d me a neat room, two pair of stairs backwards, in which there was a handsome bed, where Martha told me I was to lie with a young gentlewoman, a cousin of my mistress’s, who she was sure would be vastly good to me. Then she ran out into such affected encomiums on her good mistress! her sweet mistress! and how happy I was to light upon her! that I could not have bespoke a better; with other the like gross stuff, such as would itself have started suspicions in any but such an unpractised simpleton, who was perfectly new to life, and who took every word she said in the very sense she laid out for me to take it; but she readily saw what a penetration she had to deal with, and measured me very rightly in her manner of whistling to me, so as to make me pleased with my cage, and blind to the wires.
In the midst of these false explanations of the nature of my future service, we were rung for down again, and I was reintroduced into the same parlour, where there was a table laid with three covers; and my mistress had now got with her one of her favourite girls, a notable manager of her house, and whose business it was to prepare and break such young fillies as I was to the mounting-block; and she was accordingly, in that view, allotted me for a bedfellow; and, to give her the more authority, she had the title of cousin conferr’d on her by the venerable president of this college.
Here I underwent a second survey, which ended in the approbation of Mrs Phoebe Ayres, the name of my tutoress elect, to whose care and instructions I was affectionately recommended.
Dinner was now set on table, and in pursuance of treating me as a companion, Mrs Brown, with a tone to cut off all dispute, soon overrul’d my most humble and most confused protestations against sitting down with her Ladyship, which my very short breeding just suggested to me could not be right, or in the order of things.
At table, the conversation was chiefly kept up by the two madams, and carried on in double-meaning expressions, interrupted every now and then by kind assurances to me, all tending to confirm and fix my satisfaction with my present condition: augment it they could not, so very a novice was I then.
It was here agreed that I should keep myself up and out of sight for a few days, till such clothes could be procured for me as were fit for the character I was to appear in, of my mistress’s companion, observing withal, that on the first impressions of my figure much might depend; and, as they well judged, the prospect of exchanging my country clothes for London finery made the clause of confinement digest perfectly well with me. But the truth was, Mrs Brown did not care that I should be seen or talked to by any, either of her customers, or her Does (as they call’d the girls provided for them), till she had secured a good market for my maidenhead, which I had at least all the appearances of having brought into her Ladyship’s service.
To slip over minutes of no importance to the main of my story, I pass the interval to bedtime, in which I was more and more pleas’d with the views that opened to me of an easy service under these good people; and after supper being show’d up to bed, Miss Phoebe, who observed a kind of reluctance in me to strip and go to bed, in my shift, before her, now the maid was withdrawn, came up to me, and beginning with unpinning my handkerchief and gown, soon encouraged me to go on with undressing myself; and, still blushing at now seeing myself naked to my shift, I hurried to get under the bedclothes out of sight. Phoebe laugh’d and it was not long before she placed herself by my side. She was about five and twenty, by her most suspicious account, in which, according to all appearances, she must have sunk at least ten good years: allowance, too, being made for the havoc which a long course of hackneyship and hot waters must have made of her constitution, and which had already brought on, upon the spur, that stale stage in which those of her profession are reduced to think of showing company, instead of seeing it.
No sooner then was this precious substitute of my mistress’s laid down, but she, who was never out of her way when any occasion of lewdness presented itself, turned to me, embraced and kiss’d me with great eagerness. This was new, this was odd; but imputing it to nothing but pure kindness, which, for aught I knew, it might be the London way to express in that manner, I was determin’d
