n the mortgage."

"Well, well, sir," says I, "can you put this out for me now?"

"Let it lie, madam," says he, "till the next year, and then I'll put out
your L1400 together, and in the meantime I'll pay you interest for the
L700." So he gave me his bill for the money, which he told me should be
no less than L6 per cent. Sir Robert Clayton's bill was what nobody
would refuse, so I thanked him and let it lie; and next year I did the
same, and the third year Sir Robert got me a good mortgage for L2200 at
L6 per cent interest. So I had L132 a year added to my income, which was
a very satisfying article.

But I return to my history. As I have said, I found that my measures
were all wrong; the posture I set up in exposed me to innumerable
visitors of the kind I have mentioned above. I was cried up for a vast
fortune, and one that Sir Robert Clayton managed for; and Sir Robert
Clayton was courted for me as much as I was for myself. But I had given
Sir Robert his cue. I had told him my opinion of matrimony, in just the
same terms as I had done my merchant, and he came into it presently. He
owned that my observation was just, and that if I valued my liberty, as
I knew my fortune, and that it was in my own hands, I was to blame if I
gave it away to any one.

But Sir Robert knew nothing of my design, that I aimed at being a kept
mistress, and to have a handsome maintenance; and that I was still for
getting money, and laying it up too, as much as he could desire me, only
by a worse way.

However, Sir Robert came seriously to me one day, and told me he had an
offer of matrimony to make to me that was beyond all that he had heard
had offered themselves, and this was a merchant. Sir Robert and I agreed
exactly in our notions of a merchant. Sir Robert said, and I found it to
be true, that a true-bred merchant is the best gentleman in the nation;
that in knowledge, in manners, in judgment of things, the merchant
outdid many of the nobility; that having once mastered the world, and
being above the demand of business, though no real estate, they were
then superior to most gentlemen, even in estate; that a merchant in
flush business and a capital stock is able to spend more money than a
gentleman of L5000 a year estate; that while a merchant spent, he only
spent what he got, and not that, and that he laid up great sums every
year; that an estate is a pond, but that a trade was a spring; that if
the first is once mortgaged, it seldom