says she, "I
have found a scheme how you shall, if you have a mind to it, begin and
finish a perfect entire change of your figure and circumstances in one
day, and shall be as much unknown, madam, in twenty-four hours, as you
would be in so many years."

"Come, Amy," says I, "let us hear of it, for you please me mightily with
the thoughts of it." "Why, then," says Amy, "let me go into the city
this afternoon, and I'll inquire out some honest, plain sober family,
where I will take lodgings for you, as for a country gentlewoman that
desires to be in London for about half a year, and to board yourself and
a kinswoman--that is, half a servant, half a companion, meaning myself;
and so agree with them by the month. To this lodging (if I hit upon one
to your mind) you may go to-morrow morning in a hackney-coach, with
nobody but me, and leave such clothes and linen as you think fit, but,
to be sure, the plainest you have; and then you are removed at once; you
never need set your foot in this house again" (meaning where we then
were), "or see anybody belonging to it. In the meantime I'll let the
servants know that you are going over to Holland upon extraordinary
business, and will leave off your equipages, and so I'll give them
warning, or, if they will accept of it, give them a month's wages. Then
I'll sell off your furniture as well as I can. As to your coach, it is
but having it new painted and the lining changed, and getting new
harness and hammercloths, and you may keep it still or dispose of it as
you think fit. And only take care to let this lodging be in some remote
part of the town, and you may be as perfectly unknown as if you had
never been in England in your life."

This was Amy's scheme, and it pleased me so well that I resolved not
only to let her go, but was resolved to go with her myself; but Amy put
me off of that, because, she said, she should have occasion to hurry up
and down so long that if I was with her it would rather hinder than
further her, so I waived it.

In a word, Amy went, and was gone five long hours; but when she came
back I could see by her countenance that her success had been suitable
to her pains, for she came laughing and gaping. "O madam!" says she, "I
have pleased you to the life;" and with that she tells me how she had
fixed upon a house in a court in the Minories; that she was directed to
it merely by accident; that it was a female family, the master of the
house being gone to New En