and to myself, you may be
sure. But in answer to my friend the Quaker, I returned by asking her a
question or two about it; as what she thought was in it, and why she
thought there was anything in it. "For," says I, "she can have nothing
in it relating to me."

"Nay," says the kind Quaker, "if she had any view towards thee, that's
no business of mine; and I should be far from desiring thee to inform
me."

This alarmed me again; not that I feared trusting the good-humoured
creature with it, if there had been anything of just suspicion in her;
but this affair was a secret I cared not to communicate to anybody.
However, I say, this alarmed me a little; for as I had concealed
everything from her, I was willing to do so still; but as she could not
but gather up abundance of things from the girl's discourse, which
looked towards me, so she was too penetrating to be put off with such
answers as might stop another's mouth. Only there was this double
felicity in it, first, that she was not inquisitive to know or find
anything out, and not dangerous if she had known the whole story. But,
as I say, she could not but gather up several circumstances from the
girl's discourse, as particularly the name of Amy, and the several
descriptions of the Turkish dress which my friend the Quaker had seen,
and taken so much notice of, as I have said above.

As for that, I might have turned it off by jesting with Amy, and asking
her who she lived with before she came to live with me. But that would
not do, for we had unhappily anticipated that way of talking, by having
often talked how long Amy had lived with me; and, which was still worse,
by having owned formerly that I had had lodgings in the Pall Mall; so
that all those things corresponded too well. There was only one thing
that helped me out with the Quaker, and that was the girl's having
reported how rich Mrs. Amy was grown, and that she kept her coach. Now,
as there might be many more Mrs. Amys besides mine, so it was not likely
to be my Amy, because she was far from such a figure as keeping her
coach; and this carried it off from the suspicions which the good
friendly Quaker might have in her head.

But as to what she imagined the girl had in her head, there lay more
real difficulty in that part a great deal, and I was alarmed at it very
much, for my friend the Quaker told me that she observed the girl was in
a great passion when she talked of the habit, and more when I had been
impo