ay, would have provided for me too, as she has done for my
brother; but nobody could tell where to find me, and so I have lost it
all, and all the hopes of being anything but a poor servant all my
days;" and then the girl fell a-crying again.

Amy said, "What's all this story? Who could this lady be? It must be
some trick, sure." "No," she said, "it was not a trick, for she had made
them take her brother home from apprentice, and bought him new clothes,
and put him to have more learning; and the gentlewoman said she would
make him her heir."

"Her heir!" says Amy. "What does that amount to? It may be she had
nothing to leave him; she might make anybody her heir."

"No, no,"' says the girl; "she came in a fine coach and horses, and I
don't know how many footmen to attend her, and brought a great bag of
gold and gave it to my uncle ----, he that brought up my brother, to buy
him clothes and to pay for his schooling and board."

"He that brought up your brother?" says Amy. "Why, did not he bring you
up too as well as your brother? Pray who brought you up, then?"

Here the poor girl told a melancholy story, how an aunt had brought up
her and her sister, and how barbarously she had used them, as we have
heard.

By this time Amy had her head full enough, and her heart too, and did
not know how to hold it, or what to do, for she was satisfied that this
was no other than my own daughter, for she told her all the history of
her father and mother, and how she was carried by their maid to her
aunt's door, just as is related in the beginning of my story.

Amy did not tell me this story for a great while, nor did she well know
what course to take in it; but as she had authority to manage everything
in the family, she took occasion some time after, without letting me
know anything of it, to find some fault with the maid and turn her away.

Her reasons were good, though at first I was not pleased when I heard of
it, but I was convinced afterwards that she was in the right, for if she
had told me of it I should have been in great perplexity between the
difficulty of concealing myself from my own child and the inconvenience
of having my way of living be known among my first husband's relations,
and even to my husband himself; for as to his being dead at Paris, Amy,
seeing me resolved against marrying any more, had told me that she had
formed that story only to make me easy when I was in Holland if anything
should offer to my lik