88 THE HISTORY )F

be well supposed, his many visits, particularly
his having come to me the last night, when my
mistress was known to be in town, had made
even my best friends think very ill of me.

This the cruel girl took care to point out to
me; and then, thinking to make my grief still
deeper, she said, ‘“ Do not think, Susan, that
the Captain, for whom you have lost your good
name, has any love for you—-No, no, truly,
don’t trust to that. ’Tis likely enough that he
should be steady to a poor ’prentice girl, when
he never, for a week together, is true to the
finest lady in the land. Let me tell you, Susan,
that there are many of your betters, even in
Ludlow, that he has deceived.”

“I am sorry for that, Charlotte,” said I,
plucking up a little courage: ‘but he has
never deceived me.”

I was sorry I said this afterwards; for it
made her ten times more violent. She called
me a thousand ill names; and I found, from
what she said in her passion, that her anger
against me was from this cause; that, since the
naughty gentleman had become acquainted
with me, he had taken Jess notice of her than
he had done before.

When I found that this was the case, I wip-
ed away my tears, and, getting up and coming
towards her, “‘ My dear Charlotte,” said I, “if
we have either of us ever talked of the Captain,
or been led by him to do any thing wrong,
which, however, I hope is not the case, let us
repent and be sorry for our faults, and let us
think of him no more, but turn our hearts to