will.'

"'Some allowances for boys and girls, I hope, Madam; but you see I am
as good for a man as my sister for a woman.'

"'No indeed, you are not, I do assure you.'

"'I am sorry for that. Madam; you give me a sad opinion of myself.'"

"Brazen wretch!" said my lady; "but go on."

"'Turn to one of the girl's observations on some text,' said my
mother.

"I did; and was pleased with it more than I would own. 'The girl's
well enough,' said I, 'for what she is; but let's see what she'll be a
few years hence. Then will be the trial.'

"'She'll be always good, I doubt not.'

"'So much the better for her. But can't we talk of any other subject?
You complain how seldom I attend you; and when you are always talking
of matrimony, or of this low-born, raw girl, it must needs lessen the
pleasure of approaching you.'

"But now, as I hinted to you, ladies, and my lord, I had a still
higher opinion of Pamela; and esteemed her more worthy of my attempts.
'For,' thought I, 'the girl has good sense, and it will be some
pleasure to watch by what gradations she may be made to rise into
love, and into a higher life, than that to which she was born.' And so
I began to think she would be worthy in time of being my _mistress,_
which, till now, as I said before, I had been a little scrupulous
about.

"I took a little tour soon after this in company of some friends, with
whom I had contracted an intimacy abroad, into Scotland and Ireland,
they having a curiosity to see those countries, and we spent six or
eight months on this expedition; and when I had landed them in France,
I returned home, and found my good mother in a very indifferent state
of health, but her Pamela arrived to a height of beauty and perfection
which exceeded all my expectations. I was so taken with her charms
when I first saw her, which was in the garden, with a book in her
hand, just come out of a little summer-house, that I then thought of
obliging her to go back again, in order to begin a parley with her:
but while I was resolving, she tript away with her curtesies and
reverences, and was out of my sight before I could determine.

"I was resolved, however, not to be long without her; and Mrs. Jewkes
having been recommended to me a little before, by a brother-rake, as
a woman of tried fidelity, I asked her if she would be faithful, if I
had occasion to commit a pretty girl to her care?

"She hoped, she said, it would be with the lady's own consent, and she