assed, I should be unworthy, if I could
not say, that I can have no will but yours: And however awkwardly
I shall behave in such company, weighed down with a sense of
your obligations on one side, and my own unworthiness, with their
observations on the other, I will not scruple to obey you.

I am obliged to you, Pamela, said he, and pray be only dressed as you
are; for since they know your condition, and I have told them the story
of your present dress, and how you came by it, one of the young ladies
begs it as a favour, that they may see you just as you are: and I am
the rather pleased it should be so, because they will perceive you owe
nothing to dress, but make a much better figure with your own native
stock of loveliness, than the greatest ladies arrayed in the most
splendid attire, and adorned with the most glittering jewels.

O sir, said I, your goodness beholds your poor servant in a light
greatly beyond her merit! But it must not be expected, that others,
ladies especially, will look upon me with your favourable eyes: but,
nevertheless, I should be best pleased to wear always this humble garb,
till you, for your own sake, shall order it otherwise: for, oh,
sir, said I, I hope it will be always my pride to glory most in your
goodness! and it will be a pleasure to me to shew every one, that, with
respect to my happiness in this life, I am entirely the work of your
bounty; and to let the world see from what a lowly original you have
raised me to honours, that the greatest ladies would rejoice in.

Admirable Pamela! said he; excellent girl!--Surely thy sentiments are
superior to those of all thy sex!--I might have addressed a hundred fine
ladies; but never, surely, could have had reason to admire one as I do
you.

As, my dear father and mother, I repeat these generous sayings, only
because they are the effect of my master's goodness, being far from
presuming to think I deserve one of them; so I hope you will not
attribute it to my vanity; for I do assure you, I think I ought rather
to be more humble, as I am more obliged: for it must be always a sign of
a poor condition, to receive obligations one cannot repay; as it is of
a rich mind, when it can confer them without expecting or needing a
return. It is, on one side, the state of the human creature, compared,
on the other, to the Creator; and so, with due deference, may his
beneficence be said to be Godlike, and that is the highest that can be
said.

The chari