ruction.'

Methought, then, the matronly lady, who had, by the time the young lady
came to her, bought and paid for the goods she wanted, ordered her
coachman to drive home with all speed; who stopped not till he had
arrived in a certain street not far from Lincoln's-inn-fields, where the
matronly lady lived in a sumptuous dwelling, replete with damsels who
wrought curiously in muslins, cambrics, and fine linen, and in every good
work that industrious damsels love to be employed about, except the loom
and the spinning-wheel.

And, methought, all the way the young lady and the old lady rode, and
after they came in, till dinner was ready, the young lady filled up the
time with the dismal account of her wrongs and her sufferings, the like
of which was never heard by mortal ear; and this in so moving a manner,
that the good old lady did nothing but weep, and sigh, and sob, and
inveigh against the arts of wicked men, and against that abominable
'Squire Lovelace, who was a plotting villain, methought she said; and
more than that, an unchained Beelzebub.

Methought I was in a dreadful agony, when I found the lady had escaped,
and in my wrath had like to have slain Dorcas, and our mother, and every
one I met. But, by some quick transition, and strange metamorphosis,
which dreams do not usually account for, methought, all of a sudden, this
matronly lady turned into the famous mother H. herself; and, being an old
acquaintance of mother Sinclair, was prevailed upon to assist in my plot
upon the young lady.

Then, methought, followed a strange scene; for mother H. longing to hear
more of the young lady's story, and night being come, besought her to
accept of a place in her own bed, in order to have all the talk to
themselves. For, methought, two young nieces of her's had broken in upon
them, in the middle of the dismal tale.

Accordingly, going early to bed, and the sad story being resumed, with as
great earnestness on one side as attention on the other, before the young
lady had gone far in it, mother H. methought was taken with a fit of the
colic; and her tortures increasing, was obliged to rise to get a cordial
she used to find specific in this disorder, to which she was unhappily
subject.

Having thus risen, and stept to her closet, methought she let fall the
wax taper in her return; and then [O metamorphosis still stranger than
the former! what unaccountable things are dreams!] coming to bed again in
the dark, the you