says her friend, ‘and one of his hands, and his face, for they
used him barbarously.’ ‘Poor gentleman,’ says my governess,
‘I must wait, then, till he recovers’; and adds, ‘I hope it will
not be long, for I want very much to speak with him.’
Away she comes to me and tells me this story. ‘I have found
out your fine gentleman, and a fine gentleman he was,’ says
she; ‘but, mercy on him, he is in a sad pickle now. I wonder
what the d–l you have done to him; why, you have almost
killed him.’ I looked at her with disorder enough. ‘I killed
him!’ says I; ‘you must mistake the person; I am sure I did
nothing to him; he was very well when I left him,’ said I, ‘only
drunk and fast asleep.’ ‘I know nothing of that,’ says she,
‘but he is in a sad pickle now’; and so she told me all that her
friend had said to her. ‘Well, then,’ says I, ‘he fell into bad
hands after I left him,for I am sure I left him safe enough.’
About ten days after, or a little more, my governess goes again
to her friend, to introduce her to this gentleman; she had
inquired other ways in the meantime, and found that he was
about again, if not abroad again, so she got leave to speak
with him.
She was a woman of a admirable address, and wanted nobody
to introduce her; she told her tale much better than I shall be
able to tell it for her, for she was a mistress of her tongue, as
I have said already. She told him that she came, though a
stranger, with a single design of doing him a service and he
should find she had no other end in it; that as she came purely
on so friendly an account, she begged promise from him, that
if he did not accept what she should officiously propose he
would not take it ill that she meddled with what was not her
business. She assured him that as what she had to say was a
secret that belonged to him only, so whether he accepted her
offer or not, it should remain a secret to all the world, unless
he exposed it himself; nor should his refusing her service in it
make her so little show her respect as to do him the least injury,
so that he should be entirely at liberty to act as he thought fit.
He looked very shy at first, and said he knew nothing that
related to him that required much secrecy; that he had never
done any man any wrong, and cared not what anybody might
say of him; that it was no part of his character to be unjust to
anybody, nor could he imagine in what any man could render
him any service; but that if it was so disinterested a service as
she said, he could not take it ill from any one that they should
endeavour to serve him; and so, as it were, left her a liberty
either to tell him or not to tell, as she thought fit.
She found him so perfectly indifferent, that she was almost
afraid to enter into the point with him; but, however, after
some other circumlocutions she told him that by a strange and
unaccountable accident she came to have a particular knowledge
of the late unhappy adventure he had fallen into, and that in such
a manner, that there was nobody in the world but herself and
him that were acquainted with it, no, not the very person that
was with him.
He looked a little angrily at first. ‘What adventure?’ said he.
‘Why,’ said she, ‘of your being robbed coming from Knightbr—-;
Hampstead, sir, I should say,’ says she. ‘Be not surprised, sir,’
says she, ‘that I am able to tell you every step you took that
day from the cloister in Smithfield to the Spring Garden at
Knightsbridge, and thence to the —- in the Strand, and how
you were left asleep in the coach afterwards. I say, let not
this surprise you, for, sir, I do not come to make a booty of