sir
Edward settled a small pension on her, and she was allowed to come
every Sunday to dine in the housekeeper's room, and see her little
lady.

When she went home it might have been expected she would have
neglected the child she had so wickedly stolen; instead of which she
nursed it with the greatest tenderness, being very sorry for what
she had done: all the ease she could ever find for her troubled
conscience, was in her extreme care of this injured child; and in the
weekly visits to its father's house she constantly brought it with
her. At the time I have the earliest recollection of her, she was
become a widow, and with the pension sir Edward allowed her, and some
plain work she did for our family, she maintained herself and her
supposed daughter. The doting fondness she shewed for her child was
much talked of; it was said, she waited upon it more like a servant
than a mother, and it was observed, its clothes were always made, as
far as her slender means would permit, in the same fashion, and her
hair cut and curled in the same form as mine. To this person, as
having been my faithful nurse, and to her child, I was always taught
to shew particular civility, and the little girl was always brought
into the nursery to play with me. Ann was a little delicate thing, and
remarkably well-behaved; for though so much indulged in every other
respect, my mother was very attentive to her manners.

As the child grew older, my mother became very uneasy about her
education. She was so very desirous of having her well-behaved, that
she feared to send her to school, lest she should learn ill manners
among the village children, with whom she never suffered her to play;
and she was such a poor scholar herself, that she could teach her
little or nothing. I heard her relate this her distress to my own
maid, with tears in her eyes, and I formed a resolution to beg of my
parents that I might have Ann for a companion, and that she might be
allowed to take lessons with me of my governess.

My birth-day was then approaching, and on that day I was always
indulged in the privilege of asking some peculiar favour.

"And what boon has my annual petitioner to beg to-day?" said my
father, as he entered the breakfast-room on the morning of my
birth-day. Then I told him of the great anxiety expressed by nurse
Withers concerning her daughter; how much she wished it was in her
power to give her an education, that would enable her to get her
liv