rk with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the chief
trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would
work for her, and I would work very hard.
I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I did
nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman so
much, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved me
very well.
One day after this, as she came into the room where all we poor
children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her
usual place as mistress, but as if she set herself on purpose to
observe me and see me work. I was doing something she had set me to;
as I remember, it was marking some shirts which she had taken to make,
and after a while she began to talk to me. 'Thou foolish child,' says
she, 'thou art always crying (for I was crying then); 'prithee, what
dost cry for?' 'Because they will take me away,' says I, 'and put me to
service, and I can't work housework.' 'Well, child,' says she, 'but
though you can't work housework, as you call it, you will learn it in
time, and they won't put you to hard things at first.' 'Yes, they
will,' says I, 'and if I can't do it they will beat me, and the maids
will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a little girl and I
can't do it'; and then I cried again, till I could not speak any more
to her.
This moved my good motherly nurse, so that she from that time resolved
I should not go to service yet; so she bid me not cry, and she would
speak to Mr. Mayor, and I should not go to service till I was bigger.
Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to service was
such a frightful thing to me, that if she had assured me I should not
have gone till I was twenty years old, it would have been the same to
me; I should have cried, I believe, all the time, with the very
apprehension of its being to be so at last.
When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be angry with
me. 'And what would you have?' says she; 'don't I tell you that you
shall not go to service till your are bigger?' 'Ay,' said I, 'but then
I must go at last.' 'Why, what?' said she; 'is the girl mad? What
would you be--a gentlewoman?' 'Yes,' says I, and cried heartily till I
roared out again.
This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be sure it
would. 'Well, madam, forsooth,' says she, gibing at me, 'you would be
a gentlewoman; and pray how will you come to be a
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