, and
beginning to examine his nosegays, culls out two, one for herself,
another for me, and pulling out half a crown, very currently gives it
him to change, as if she had really expected he could have changed it:
but the boy, scratching his head, made his signs explain his inability
in place of words, which he could not, with all his struggles,
articulate.

Louisa, at this, says: "Well, my lad, come up stairs with me, and I will
give you your due," winking at the same time to me, and beckoning me to
accompany her, which I did, securing first the street-door, that by this
means, together with the shop, became wholly the care of the faithful
house-maid.

As we went up, Louisa whispered me "that she had conceived a strange
longing to be satisfied, whether the general rule held good with regard
to this changeling, and how far nature had made him amends, in her best
bodily gifts, for her denial of the sublimer intellectual ones; begin,
at the same time, my assistance in procuring her this satisfaction." A
want of complaisance was never my vice, and I was so far from opposing
this extravagant frolic, that now, bit with the same maggot, and my
curiosity conspiring with hers, I entered plump into it, on my own
account.

Consequently, soon as we came into Louisa's bed-chamber, whilst she was
amusing him with picking out his nosegays, I undertook the lead, and
began the attack. As it was not then very material to keep much measures
with a mere natural, I made presently free with him, though at my first
motion of meddling, his surprise and confusion made him receive my
advances but awkwardly: nay, insomuch that he bashfully shied, and shied
back a little; till encouraging him with my eyes, plucking him playfully
by the hair, sleeking his cheeks, and forwarding my point by a number
of little wantonnesses, I soon turned him familiar, and gave nature
her sweetest alarm: so that aroused, and beginning to feel himself, we
could, amidst all the innocent laugh and grin I had provoked him into,
perceive the fire lighting in his eyes, and, diffusing over his cheeks,
blend its glow with that of his blushes. The emotion in short of animal
pleasure glared distinctly in the simpleton's countenance; yet struck
with the novelty of the scene, he did not know which way to look or
move; but tame, passive, simpering, with his mouth half open, in stupid
rapture, stood and tractably suffered me to do what I pleased with him.
His basket was dropt