ould put it to the question.

In this I was a double offender, whatever he was, for I was resolved to
commit the crime, knowing and owning it to be a crime; he, if it was
true as he said, was fully persuaded it was lawful, and in that
persuasion he took the measures and used all the circumlocutions which I
am going to speak of.

About two hours after he was gone, came a Leadenhall basket-woman, with
a whole load of good things for the mouth (the particulars are not to
the purpose), and brought orders to get supper by eight o'clock.
However, I did not intend to begin to dress anything till I saw him; and
he gave me time enough, for he came before seven, so that Amy, who had
gotten one to help her, got everything ready in time.

We sat down to supper about eight, and were indeed very merry. Amy made
us some sport, for she was a girl of spirit and wit, and with her talk
she made us laugh very often, and yet the jade managed her wit with all
the good manners imaginable.

But to shorten the story. After supper he took me up into his chamber,
where Amy had made a good fire, and there he pulled out a great many
papers, and spread them upon a little table, and then took me by the
hand, and after kissing me very much, he entered into a discourse of his
circumstances and of mine, how they agreed in several things exactly;
for example, that I was abandoned of a husband in the prime of my youth
and vigour, and he of a wife in his middle age; how the end of marriage
was destroyed by the treatment we had either of us received, and it
would be very hard that we should be tied by the formality of the
contract where the essence of it was destroyed. I interrupted him, and
told him there was a vast difference between our circumstances, and that
in the most essential part, namely, that he was rich, and I was poor;
that he was above the world, and I infinitely below it; that his
circumstances were very easy, mine miserable, and this was an inequality
the most essential that could be imagined. "As to that, my dear," says
he, "I have taken such measures as shall make an equality still;" and
with that he showed me a contract in writing, wherein he engaged himself
to me to cohabit constantly with me, to provide for me in all respects
as a wife, and repeating in the preamble a long account of the nature
and reason of our living together, and an obligation in the penalty of
L7000 never to abandon me; and at last showed me a bond for L500, to b