dst of all this mirth and splendour, the father died, and left
them all totally without support other than their own industry could
procure for them, slender provision indeed! Miss Molly, the eldest, was
about twenty-two at the time of her father's death, and her sisters were
each of them younger than her, and Alice a year younger than Jenny, and
about eighteen. The mother was at her wits' end to know how to procure a
living for herself and them, but an old gentleman in one of the
colleges, to whom Peter had been very useful, and who therefore retained
a grateful sense of his service, was so kind as to give fifty pounds
towards putting out the daughters, and took care to see the youngest
Alice placed with a mantua-maker in London. Molly fell into a
consumption, as was generally said, for the love of a young gentleman
who used to spend his evenings at her father's, and who marrying a young
lady of suitable birth and fortune to himself, was retired into
Shropshire. Jenny ran away with a servitor, and was lost to her mother
and her friends; so that Alice had it in her power to be tolerably
provided for, if she had inclined to have lived virtuously, and not to
have frustrated the offers of a good fortune. But she was wild and silly
from her cradle, born without capacity to do good to herself, and
indued only with such cunning as served her to ruin others.

The first intrigue she had after her coming up to London was with a
young fellow who was clerk to a Justice of the Peace in the
neighbourhood. Before be saw Alice he had been a careful, industrious
young man, and through his master's kindness had picked up some money;
but from the time that his master had a suit of clothes made up with
Alice's mistress, and which occasioned her first coming about the house,
poor Mr. Philip became the victim of her charms, and moped up and down
like a hen that had lost her chickens. It was not long before the
Justice's daughters found out his passion, and having communicated their
discovery to the maids, exposed him to be the laughing stock of the
whole house. Never was a poor young fellow so pestered! One asked him
whether he liked the wife with three trades? Another was enquiring
whether he had cast up the amount of remnants of silk, shreds of lace,
and the savings that might be made out of linings, facings, and robings?
The Justice took notice that Philip had left off reading the news, and
the old lady wondered whether he had forgotten p