d
dancing; and, as she would have it, I had a voice, she made me learn
both; and often and often has she made me sing her an innocent song, and
a good psalm too, and dance before her. And I must learn to flower and
draw too, and to work fine work with my needle; why, all this too I have
got pretty tolerably at my finger's end, as they say; and she used to
praise me, and was a good judge of such matters.

Well now, what is all this to the purpose, as things have turned about?

Why, no more nor less, than that I am like the grasshopper in the fable,
which I have read of in my lady's book, as follows:--[See the Aesop's
Fables which have lately been selected and reformed from those of Sir R.
L'Estrange, and the most eminent mythologists.]

'As the ants were airing their provisions one winter, a hungry
grasshopper (as suppose it was poor I) begged a charity of them. They
told him, That he should have wrought in summer, if he would not
have wanted in winter. Well, says the grasshopper, but I was not idle
neither; for I sung out the whole season. Nay, then, said they, you'll
e'en do well to make a merry year of it, and dance in winter to the time
you sung in summer.'

So I shall make a fine figure with my singing and my dancing, when I
come home to you! Nay, I shall be unfit even for a May-day holiday-time;
for these minuets, rigadoons, and French dances, that I have been
practising, will make me but ill company for my milk-maid companions
that are to be. To be sure I had better, as things stand, have learned
to wash and scour, and brew and bake, and such like. Put I hope, if I
can't get work, and can meet with a place, to learn these soon, if
any body will have the goodness to bear with me till I am able: For,
notwithstanding what my master says, I hope I have an humble and
teachable mind; and, next to God's grace, that's all my comfort: for I
shall think nothing too mean that is honest. It may be a little hard at
first; but woe to my proud heart, if I find it so on trial; for I will
make it bend to its condition, or break it.

I have read of a good bishop that was to be burnt for his religion; and
he tried how he could bear it, by putting his fingers into the lighted
candle: So I, t'other day, tried, when Rachel's back was turned, if
I could not scour a pewter plate she had begun. I see I could do't by
degrees: It only blistered my hand in two places.

All the matter is, if I could get plain-work enough, I need not spo