to prison, to which proposal, after much entreaty, she
consented.

When we arrived at the gate of the Marshalsea, our conductor alighted,
and having demanded entrance, presented the writ to the turnkey, who no
sooner perceived the name of Elizabeth Cary than he cried, "Ah, ah:
my old acquaintance Bet! I'm glad to see thee with all my heart." So
saying, he opened the coach door, and helped her to dismount; but when
he observed her face, he started back, saying, "Who have we got here?"
The bailiff, alarmed at this interrogation, cried with some emotion,
"Who should it be but the prisoner, Elizabeth Cary?" The turnkey
replied, "That Elizabeth Cary! I'll be hanged if that's Elizabeth Cary
more than my grandmother." Here the lady thought fit to interpose, and
tell the catchpole, if he had taken her word for it at first, he might
have saved himself and her a great deal of trouble. "It may be so,"
answered he, "but I'll have further evidence that you are not the
person, before you and I part." "Yes, yes," said she, "you shall have
further evidence, to your cost." Then we adjourned into the lodge, and
called for a bottle of wine, where my companion wrote a direction to
two of her acquaintance, and begged the favour of me to go to their
lodgings, and request them to come to her immediately. I found them
together at a house in Brydges Street, Drury Lane, and as they were
luckily unengaged, they set out with me in a hackney-coach without
hesitation, after I had related the circumstances of the affair, which
flattered then with hopes of seeing a bailiff trounced; for there is an
antipathy as natural between women of that class and bailiffs, as that
subsisting between mice and cats. Accordingly, when they entered the
lodge, they embraced the prisoner very affectionately by the name of
Nancy Williams, and asked how long she had been nabbed, and for what? On
hearing the particulars of her adventure repeated, they offered to swear
before a justice of peace that she was not the person mentioned in the
writ, whom, it seems, they all knew; but the bailiff, who was by the
time convinced of his mistake, told them he would not put them to that
trouble. "Ladies," said he, "there's no harm done--you shall give me
leave to treat you with another bottle, and then we'll part friends."
This proposal was not at all relished by the sisterhood: and Miss
Williams told him, sure he did not imagine her such a fool as to be
satisfied with a paltry glass