before, though he did not perceive it.
After a full hearing, the alderman gave it as his opinion that
his neighbour was under a mistake, and that I was innocent,
and the goldsmith acquiesced in it too, and his wife, and so
I was dismissed; but as I was going to depart, Mr. Alderman
said, ‘But hold, madam, if you were designing to buy spoons,
I hope you will not let my friend here lose his customer by
the mistake.’ I readily answered, ‘No, sir, I’ll buy the spoons
still, if he can match my odd spoon, which I brought for a
pattern’; and the goldsmith showed me some of the very same
fashion. So he weighed the spoons, and they came to five-and-thirty
shillings, so I pulls out my purse to pay him, in which I had
near twenty guineas, for I never went without such a sum
about me, whatever might happen, and I found it of use at
other times as well as now.
When Mr. Alderman saw my money, he said, ‘Well, madam,
now I am satisfied you were wronged, and it was for this
reason that I moved you should buy the spoons, and stayed
till you had bought them, for if you had not had money to pay
for them, I should have suspected that you did not come into
the shop with an intent to buy, for indeed the sort of people
who come upon these designs that you have been charged
with, are seldom troubled with much gold in their pockets,
as I see you are.’
I smiled, and told his worship, that then I owed something of
his favour to my money, but I hoped he saw reason also in
the justice he had done me before. He said, yes, he had, but
this had confirmed his opinion, and he was fully satisfied now
of my having been injured. So I came off with flying colours,
though from an affair in which I was at the very brink of
destruction.
It was but three days after this, that not at all made cautious
by my former danger, as I used to be, and still pursuing the
art which I had so long been employed in, I ventured into a
house where I saw the doors open, and furnished myself, as
I though verily without being perceived, with two pieces of
flowered silks, such as they call brocaded silk, very rich. It
was not a mercer’s shop, nor a warehouse of a mercer, but
looked like a private dwelling-house, and was, it seems,
inhabited by a man that sold goods for the weavers to the
mercers, like a broker or factor.
That I may make short of this black part of this story, I was
attacked by two wenches that came open-mouthed at me just
as I was going out at the door, and one of them pulled me
back into the room, while the other shut the door upon me.
I would have given them good words, but there was no room
for it, two fiery dragons could not have been more furious
than they were; they tore my clothes, bullied and roared as if
they would have murdered me; the mistress of the house came
next, and then the master, and all outrageous, for a while especially.
I gave the master very good words, told him the door was
open, and things were a temptation to me, that I was poor and
distressed, and poverty was when many could not resist, and
begged him with tears to have pity on me. The mistress of
the house was moved with compassion, and inclined to have
let me go, and had almost persuaded her husband to it also,
but the saucy wenches were run, even before they were sent,
and had fetched a constable, and then the master said he could
not go back, I must go before a justice, and answered his wife
that he might come into trouble himself if he should let me go.
The sight of the constable, indeed, struck me with terror, and
I thought I should have sunk into the ground. I fell into
faintings, and indeed the people themselves thought I would