er, and pressed her to tell it, most ignorantly
thinking that it would be a pleasant tale to all of us.

Two or three times the Quaker put in, that this Lady Roxana had a good
stock of assurance; and that it was likely, if she had been in Turkey,
she had lived with, or been kept by, some great bashaw there. But still
she would break in upon all such discourse, and fly out into the most
extravagant praises of her mistress, the famed Roxana. I run her down as
some scandalous woman; that it was not possible to be otherwise; but she
would not hear of it; her lady was a person of such and such
qualifications that nothing but an angel was like her, to be sure; and
yet, after all she could say, her own account brought her down to this,
that, in short, her lady kept little less than a gaming ordinary; or, as
it would be called in the times since that, an assembly for gallantry
and play.

All this while I was very uneasy, as I said before, and yet the whole
story went off again without any discovery, only that I seemed a little
concerned that she should liken me to this gay lady, whose character I
pretended to run down very much, even upon the foot of her own relation.

But I was not at the end of my mortifications yet, neither, for now my
innocent Quaker threw out an unhappy expression, which put me upon the
tenters again. Says she to me, "This lady's habit, I fancy, is just such
a one as thine, by the description of it;" and then turning to the
captain's wife, says she, "I fancy my friend has a finer Turkish or
Persian dress, a great deal." "Oh," says the girl, "'tis impossible to
be finer; my lady's," says she, "was all covered with gold and diamonds;
her hair and head-dress, I forget the name they gave it," said she,
"shone like the stars, there were so many jewels in it."

I never wished my good friend the Quaker out of my company before now;
but, indeed, I would have given some guineas to have been rid of her
just now; for beginning to be curious in the comparing the two dresses,
she innocently began a description of mine; and nothing terrified me so
much as the apprehension lest she should importune me to show it, which
I was resolved I would never agree to. But before it came to this, she
pressed my girl to describe the tyhaia, or head-dress, which she did so
cleverly that the Quaker could not help saying mine was just such a one;
and after several other similitudes, all very vexatious to me, out comes
the kind motion