On
this supposition, being received into a society above her real station,
she was compelled to spend more money than she could afford, and her
finances rapidly wasted away. In the meantime I was born--a fine baby,
but with nothing to look up to but a penniless mother, an absent (if
existing) father, the workhouse, and the sky.

CHAPTER THREE

In which my Mother proves herself a tender Wife, and at the same
time shows her Patriotism and Devotion to her Country.

I had almost unconsciously arrived at the age of two years before there
were any tidings of my father. All the information that my mother could
obtain was, that the ship's company of the "Druid" had been turned over
to another frigate called the "Melpomene," the former having been
declared not seaworthy, and in consequence condemned and broken up at
Port Royal.

But no letter had been received from my father, who indeed was not much
of a scholar; he could read, but he could not write. By this time my
mother's savings were expended, and she was in great tribulation lest
the deceit she had practiced should be exposed. Indeed, there were
already many surmises as to the truth of her story, it being so long
that her husband had been absent. At last, when she had changed her only
remaining guinea, a letter arrived from my father, dated from
Portsmouth, stating that the ship was to be paid off in a few days, and
then "he would clap on all sail and be on board of his old woman in no
time."

My mother, although not a little disgusted at being called an old
woman--an affront which she determined to revenge upon a more fitting
occasion--was in raptures with the contents of the letter. She therefore
returned a kind answer, informing my father what a promising child he
was blessed with, and giving him a direction to meet her at Greenwich,
as she had resolved upon not receiving him at Woolwich, where her false
assertions would have been exposed. Going round to all her
acquaintances, she bade them farewell, telling them that her husband had
returned well, and _well to-do_, and had ordered her to meet him at
Greenwich. Having thus satisfactorily, as she imagined, got out of this
little difficulty, she packed up and hastened to Greenwich, where she
sunk her assumed rank and waited very impatiently for her husband. He
came at last, seated with many others on the outside of a stage
coach--his hat bedecked with ribbons, a pipe in one hand and flourishing
a