, two pair of stairs
backwards, in which there was a handsome bed, where Martha told me I was
to lie with a young gentlewoman, a cousin of my mistress, who she was
sure would be vastly good to me. Then she ran out into such affected
encomiums on her good mistress! her sweet mistress! and how happy I
was to light upon her! and that I could not have bespoke a better; with
other the like gross stuff, such as would itself have started suspicions
in any but such an unpractised simpleton, who was perfectly new to
life, and who took every word she said in the very sense she laid out
for me to take it; but she readily saw what a penetration she had to
deal with, and measured me very rightly in her manner of whistling to
me, so as to make me pleased with my cage, and blind to the wires.

In the midst of these false explanations of the nature of my future
service, we were rung for down again, and I was reintroduced into the
same parlour, where there was a table laid with three covers; and my
mistress had now got with her one of her favourite girls, a notable
manager of her house, and whose business it was to prepare and
break such young fillies as I was to the mounting block; and she was
accordingly, in that view, alloted me for a bed-fellow, and, to give her
the more authority, she had the title of cousin conferred on her by the
venerable president of this college.

Here I underwent a second survey, which ended in the full approbation
of Mrs. Phoebe Ayres, the name of my tutoress elect, to whose care and
instruction I was affectionately recommended.

Dinner was now set on table, and in pursuance of treating me as
a companion, Mrs. Brown, with a tone to cut off all dispute, soon
over-ruled my most humble and most confused protestations against
sitting down with her Ladyship, which my very short breeding just
suggested to me could not be right, or in the order of things.

At table, the conversation was chiefly kept up by the two madams and
carried on in double meaning expressions, interrupted every now and then
by kind assurances to me, all tending to confirm and fix my satisfaction
with my present condition: augment it they could not, so very a novice
was I then.

It was here agreed that I should keep myself up and out of sight for a
few days, till such clothes could be procured for me as were fit for
the character I was to appear in, of my mistress's companion, observing
withal, that on the first impressions of my figure mu