at she did not enter
farther with her into the inquiry, as she would otherwise have done; I
mean, as to what made the girl so positive; but comes away, and tells me
the whole story.

I was thunderstruck with the story at first, and much more afterwards,
as you shall hear; but, I say, I was thunderstruck at first, and amazed,
and said to Amy, "There must be something or other in it more than we
know of." But, having examined farther into it, I found the girl had no
notion of anybody but of Amy; and glad I was that I was not concerned in
the pretence, and that the girl had no notion of me in it. But even this
easiness did not continue long; for the next time Amy went to see her,
she was the same thing, and rather more violent with Amy than she was
before. Amy endeavoured to pacify her by all the ways imaginable: first,
she told her she took it ill that she would not believe her; and told
her, if she would not give over such a foolish whimsey, she would leave
her to the wide world as she found her.

This put the girl into fits, and she cried ready to kill herself, and
hung about Amy again like a child. "Why," says Amy, "why can you not be
easy with me, then, and compose yourself, and let me go on to do you
good, and show you kindness, as I would do, and as I intend to do? Can
you think that if I was your mother, I would not tell you so? What
whimsey is this that possesses your mind?" says Amy. Well, the girl told
her in a few words (but those few such as frighted Amy out of her wits,
and me too) that she knew well enough how it was. "I know," says she,
"when you left ----," naming the village, "where I lived when my father
went away from us all, that you went over to France; I know that too,
and who you went with," says the girl; "did not my Lady Roxana come back
again with you? I know it all well enough; though I was but a child, I
have heard it all." And thus she run on with such discourse as put Amy
out of all temper again; and she raved at her like a bedlam, and told
her she would never come near her any more; she might go a-begging again
if she would; she'd have nothing to do with her. The girl, a passionate
wench, told her she knew the worst of it, she could go to service again,
and if she would not own her own child, she must do as she pleased; then
she fell into a passion of crying again, as if she would kill herself.

In short, this girl's conduct terrified Amy to the last degree, and me
too; and was it not that