months, and if I would give her my company thither, I should
be as welcome as herself for a month or more as I pleased,
till I should see how I liked the country; and if I thought fit to
live there, she would undertake they would take care, though
they did not entertain lodgers themselves, they would recommend
me to some agreeable family, where I should be placed to my
content.
If this woman had known my real circumstances, she would
never have laid so many snares, and taken so many weary steps
to catch a poor desolate creature that was good for little when
it was caught; and indeed I, whose case was almost desperate,
and thought I could not be much worse, was not very anxious
about what might befall me, provided they did me no personal
injury; so I suffered myself, though not without a great deal
of invitation and great professions of sincere friendship and
real kindness–I say, I suffered myself to be prevailed upon to
go with her, and accordingly I packed up my baggage, and put
myself in a posture for a journey, though I did not absolutely
know whither I was to go.
And now I found myself in great distress; what little I had
in the world was all in money, except as before, a little plate,
some linen, and my clothes; as for my household stuff, I had
little or none, for I had lived always in lodgings; but I had not
one friend in the world with whom to trust that little I had, or
to direct me how to dispose of it, and this perplexed me night
and day. I thought of the bank, and of the other companies in
London, but I had no friend to commit the management of it
to, and keep and carry about with me bank bills, tallies, orders,
and such things, I looked upon at as unsafe; that if they were
lost, my money was lost, and then I was undone; and, on the
other hand, I might be robbed and perhaps murdered in a strange
place for them. This perplexed me strangely, and what to do I
knew not.
It came in my thoughts one morning that I would go to the
bank myself, where I had often been to receive the interest of
some bills I had, which had interest payable on them, and where
I had found a clerk, to whom I applied myself, very honest and
just to me, and particularly so fair one time that when I had
mistold my money, and taken less than my due, and was coming
away, he set me to rights and gave me the rest, which he might
have put into his own pocket.
I went to him and represented my case very plainly, and asked
if he would trouble himself to be my adviser, who was a poor
friendless widow, and knew not what to do. He told me, if
I desired his opinion of anything within the reach of his business,
he would do his endeavour that I should not be wronged, but
that he would also help me to a good sober person who was
a grave man of his acquaintance, who was a clerk in such
business too, though not in their house, whose judgment was
good, and whose honesty I might depend upon. ‘For,’ added
he, ‘I will answer for him, and for every step he takes; if he
wrongs you, madam, of one farthing, it shall lie at my door, I
will make it good; and he delights to assist people in such
cases–he does it as an act of charity.’
I was a little at a stand in this discourse; but after some pause
I told him I had rather have depended upon him, because I had
found him honest, but if that could not be, I would take his
recommendation sooner than any one’s else. ‘I dare say,
madam,’ says he, ‘that you will be as well satisfied with my
friend as with me, and he is thoroughly able to assist you,
which I am not.’ It seems he had his hands full of the business