d was not only poor, and a
servant, but was unequal to him, she being twenty-six or twenty-seven
years old, and he not above seventeen or eighteen; that he might very
probably, with my assistance, make a remove from this wilderness, and
come into his own country again, and that then it would be a thousand to
one but he would repent his choice, and the dislike of that circumstance
might be disadvantageous to both. I was going to say more, but he
interrupted me, smiling; and told me, with a great deal of modesty, that
I mistook in my guesses; that he had nothing of that kind in his
thoughts, his present circumstances being melancholy and disconsolate
enough; and he was very glad to hear that I had some thoughts of putting
them in a way to see their own country again; and that nothing should
have set him upon staying there, but that the voyage I was going was so
exceeding long and hazardous, and would carry him quite out of the reach
of all his friends; that he had nothing to desire of me, but that I
would settle him in some little property of the island where he was;
give him a servant or two, and some few necessaries, and he would settle
himself here like a planter, waiting the good time when, if ever I
returned to England, I would redeem him, and hoped I would not be
unmindful of him when I came to England; that he would give me some
letters to his friends in London, to let them know how good I had been
to him, and what part of the world, and what circumstances I had left
him in; and he promised me, that whenever I redeemed him, the
plantation, and all the improvements he had made upon it, let the value
be what it would, should be wholly mine.

His discourse was very prettily delivered, considering his youth, and
was the more agreeable to me, because he told me positively the match
was not for himself. I gave him all possible assurances, that, if I
lived to come safe to England, I would deliver his letters, and do his
business effectually, and that he might depend I would never forget the
circumstances I left him in. But still I was impatient to know who was
the person to be married; upon which he told me it was my Jack of all
Trades and his maid Susan.

I was most agreeably surprised when he named the match; for indeed I had
thought it very suitable. The character of that man I have given
already; and as for the maid, she was a very honest, modest, sober, and
religious young woman; had a very good share of sense; was