ral to it, or I
should have some fear for my Pamela, as she grows older.'

"'_I_ look after her. Madam!-_My_ eyes sparkle at such a girl as that!
No indeed! She may be your favourite as a waiting-maid; but I see
nothing but clumsy curtseys and awkward airs about her. A little
rustic affectation of innocence, that to such as cannot see into her,
may pass well enough.'

"'Nay, my dear,' replied my mother, 'don't say that, of all things.
She has no affectation, I am sure.'

"'Yes, she has, in my eye, Madam, and I'll tell you how it is; you
have taught her to assume the airs of a gentlewoman, to dance, and
to enter a room with a grace; and yet bid her keep her low birth and
family in view: and between the one character, which she wants to get
into, and the other she dares not get out of, she trips up and down
mincingly, and knows not how to set her feet: so 'tis the same in
every gesture: her arms she knows not whether to swim with, or to
hold before her, nor whether to hold her head up or down; and so
does neither, but hangs it on one side: a little awkward piece of
one-and-t'other I think her. And, indeed, you'd do the girl more
kindness to put her into your dairy, than to keep her about your
person; for she'll be utterly spoiled, I doubt, for any useful
purpose.'

"'Ah, son!' said she, 'I fear, by your description, you have minded
her too much in one sense, though not enough in another. 'Tis not my
intention to recommend her to your notice, of all men; and I doubt
not, if it please God I live, and she continues a good girl, but she
will make a man of some middling, genteel business, very happy.'

"Pamela came in just then, with an air so natural, so humble, and yet
so much above herself, that I was forced to turn my head from her,
lest my mother should watch my eye again, and I be inclined to do her
that justice, which my heart assented to, but which my lips had just
before denied her.

"All my difficulty, in apprehension, was my good mother; the effect
of whose lessons to her girl, I was not so much afraid of as her
vigilance. 'For,' thought I, 'I see by the delicacy of her person, the
brilliancy of her eye, and the sweet apprehensiveness that plays
about every feature of her face, she must have tinder enough in her
constitution, to catch a well-struck spark; and I'll warrant I shall
know how to set her in a blaze, in a few months more.'

"Yet I wanted, as I passed, to catch her attention too: I expected her
t