whether I understood the game or no; but I should not leave
off. However, he took out the fifteen guineas that he had put
in at first, and bade me play with the rest. I would have told
them to see how much I had got, but he said, ‘No, no, don’t
tell them, I believe you are very honest, and ’tis bad luck to
tell them’; so I played on.
I understood the game well enough, though I pretended I did
not, and played cautiously. It was to keep a good stock in my
lap, out of which I every now and then conveyed some into
my pocket, but in such a manner, and at such convenient times,
as I was sure he could not see it.
I played a great while, and had very good luck for him; but
the last time I held the box, they set me high, and I threw
boldly at all; I held the box till I gained near fourscore guineas,
but lost above half of it back in the last throw; so I got up, for
I was afraid I should lose it all back again, and said to him,
‘Pray come, sir, now, and take it and play for yourself; I think
I have done pretty well for you.’ He would have had me play
on, but it grew late, and I desired to be excused. When I gave
it up to him, I told him I hoped he would give me leave to tell
it now, that I might see what I had gained, and how lucky I
had been for him; when I told them, there were threescore
and three guineas. ‘Ay,’ says I, ‘if it had not been for that
unlucky throw, I had got you a hundred guineas.’ So I gave
him all the money, but he would not take it till I had put my
hand into it, and taken some for myself, and bid me please
myself. I refused it, and was positive I would not take it
myself; if he had a mind to anything of that kind, it should
be all his own doings.
The rest of the gentlemen seeing us striving cried, ‘Give it
her all’; but I absolutely refused that. Then one of them said,
‘D—-n ye, jack, halve it with her; don’t you know you should
be always upon even terms with the ladies.’ So, in short, he
divided it with me, and I brought away thirty guineas, besides
about forty-three which I had stole privately, which I was
sorry for afterward, because he was so generous.
Thus I brought home seventy-three guineas, and let my old
governess see what good luck I had at play. However, it was
her advice that I should not venture again, and I took her
counsel, for I never went there any more; for I knew as well
as she, if the itch of play came in, I might soon lose that, and
all the rest of what I had got.
Fortune had smiled upon me to that degree, and I had thriven
so much, and my governess too, for she always had a share
with me, that really the old gentlewoman began to talk of
leaving off while we were well, and being satisfied with what
we had got; but, I know not what fate guided me, I was as
backward to it now as she was when I proposed it to her
before, and so in an ill hour we gave over the thoughts of it
for the present, and, in a word, I grew more hardened and
audacious than ever, and the success I had made my name as
famous as any thief of my sort ever had been at Newgate, and
in the Old Bailey.
I had sometime taken the liberty to play the same gave over
again, which is not according to practice, which however
succeeded not amiss; but generally I took up new figures, and
contrived to appear in new shapes every time I went abroad.
It was not a rumbling time of the year, and the gentlemen
being most of them gone out of town, Tunbridge, and Epsom,