ve heard something of you if you had been dead.

_Gent._ Ay, ay; my perplexity was very great indeed, or else I had never
gone away.

_Amy._ It was very cruel, though, to the poor lady, sir, my mistress;
she almost broke her heart for you at first, for fear of what might
befall you, and at last because she could not hear from you.

_Gent._ Alas, Amy! what could I do? Things were driven to the last
extremity before I went. I could have done nothing but help starve them
all if I had stayed; and, besides, I could not bear to see it.

_Amy._ You know, sir, I can say little to what passed before, but I am a
melancholy witness to the sad distresses of my poor mistress as long as
I stayed with her, and which would grieve your heart to hear them.

[Here she tells my whole story to the time that the parish took off one
of my children, and which she perceived very much affected him; and he
shook his head, and said some things very bitter when he heard of the
cruelty of his own relations to me.]

_Gent._ Well, Amy, I have heard enough so far. What did she do
afterwards?

_Amy._ I can't give you any farther account, sir; my mistress would not
let me stay with her any longer. She said she could neither pay me or
subsist me. I told her I would serve her without any wages, but I could
not live without victuals, you know; so I was forced to leave her, poor
lady, sore against my will; and I heard afterwards that the landlord
seized her goods, so she was, I suppose, turned out of doors; for as I
went by the door, about a month after, I saw the house shut up; and,
about a fortnight after that, I found there were workmen at work,
fitting it up, as I suppose, for a new tenant. But none of the
neighbours could tell me what was become of my poor mistress, only that
they said she was so poor that it was next to begging; that some of the
neighbouring gentlefolks had relieved her, or that else she must have
starved.

Then she went on, and told him that after that they never heard any more
of (me) her mistress, but that she had been seen once or twice in the
city very shabby and poor in clothes, and it was thought she worked with
her needle for her bread.

All this the jade said with so much cunning, and managed and humoured it
so well, and wiped her eyes and cried so artificially, that he took it
all as it was intended he should, and once or twice she saw tears in his
eyes too. He told her it was a moving, melancholy story, and it had