gentlewoman indeed, as I understood that word, I not only found myself
clothes and paid my nurse for my keeping, but got money in my pocket
too beforehand.

The ladies also gave me clothes frequently of their own or their
children's; some stockings, some petticoats, some gowns, some one
thing, some another, and these my old woman managed for me like a mere
mother, and kept them for me, obliged me to mend them, and turn them
and twist them to the best advantage, for she was a rare housewife.

At last one of the ladies took so much fancy to me that she would have
me home to her house, for a month, she said, to be among her daughters.

Now, though this was exceeding kind in her, yet, as my old good woman
said to her, unless she resolved to keep me for good and all, she would
do the little gentlewoman more harm than good. 'Well,' says the lady,
'that's true; and therefore I'll only take her home for a week, then,
that I may see how my daughters and she agree together, and how I like
her temper, and then I'll tell you more; and in the meantime, if
anybody comes to see her as they used to do, you may only tell them you
have sent her out to my house.'

This was prudently managed enough, and I went to the lady's house; but
I was so pleased there with the young ladies, and they so pleased with
me, that I had enough to do to come away, and they were as unwilling to
part with me.

However, I did come away, and lived almost a year more with my honest
old woman, and began now to be very helpful to her; for I was almost
fourteen years old, was tall of my age, and looked a little womanish;
but I had such a taste of genteel living at the lady's house that I was
not so easy in my old quarters as I used to be, and I thought it was
fine to be a gentlewoman indeed, for I had quite other notions of a
gentlewoman now than I had before; and as I thought, I say, that it was
fine to be a gentlewoman, so I loved to be among gentlewomen, and
therefore I longed to be there again.

About the time that I was fourteen years and a quarter old, my good
nurse, mother I rather to call her, fell sick and died. I was then in
a sad condition indeed, for as there is no great bustle in putting an
end to a poor body's family when once they are carried to the grave, so
the poor good woman being buried, the parish children she kept were
immediately removed by the church-wardens; the school was at an end,
and the children of it had no more to do but just