imself from
the robbers. His shin and his knee are hardly to be seen to ail any
thing. He says in his letter, he was a frightful spectacle: He might be
so, indeed, when he first came in a doors; but he looks well enough now:
and, only for a few groans now and then, when he thinks of his danger,
I see nothing is the matter with him. So, Mrs. Pamela, said she, I would
have you be very easy about it. I am glad of it, said I, for all your
jokes, to Mrs. Jewkes.

Well, said she, he talks of nothing but you: and when I told him I would
fain have persuaded you to come with me, the man was out of his wits
with his gratitude to me: and so has laid open all his heart to me, and
told me all that has passed, and was contriving between you two. This
alarmed me prodigiously; and the rather, as I saw, by two or three
instances, that his honest heart could keep nothing, believing every one
as undesigning as himself. I said, but yet with a heavy heart, Ah! Mrs.
Jewkes, Mrs. Jewkes, this might have done with me, had he had any thing
that he could have told you of. But you know well enough, that had we
been disposed, we had no opportunity for it, from your watchful care and
circumspection. No, said she, that's very true, Mrs. Pamela; not so
much as for that declaration that he owned before me, he had found
opportunity, for all my watchfulness, to make you. Come, come, said she,
no more of these shams with me! You have an excellent head-piece for
your years; but may be I am as cunning as you.--However, said she,
all is well now; because my watchments are now over, by my master's
direction. How have you employed yourself in my absence?

I was so troubled at what might have passed between Mr. Williams and
her, that I could not hide it; and she said, Well, Mrs. Pamela, since
all matters are likely to be so soon and so happily ended, let me advise
you to be a little less concerned at his discoveries; and make me your
confidant, as he has done, and I shall think you have some favour for
me, and reliance upon me; and perhaps you might not repent it.

She was so earnest, that I mistrusted she did this to pump me; and I
knew how, now, to account for her kindness to Mr. Williams in her visit
to him; which was only to get out of him what she could. Why, Mrs.
Jewkes, said I, is all this fishing about for something, where there
is nothing, if there be an end of your watchments, as you call them?
Nothing, said she, but womanish curiosity, I'll assure