So I said, Your honour may call this jest or sport, or what you please;
but indeed, sir, it is not a jest that becomes the distance between a
master and a servant. Do you hear, Mrs. Jervis? said he: do you hear the
pertness of the creature? I had a good deal of this sort before in the
summer-house, and yesterday too, which made me rougher with her than
perhaps I had otherwise been.

Says Mrs. Jervis, Pamela, don't be so pert to his honour: you should know
your distance; you see his honour was only in jest.--O dear Mrs. Jervis,
said I, don't you blame me too. It is very difficult to keep one's
distance to the greatest of men, when they won't keep it themselves to
their meanest servants.

See again! said he; could you believe this of the young baggage, if you
had not heard it? Good your honour, said the well-meaning gentlewoman,
pity and forgive the poor girl; she is but a girl, and her virtue is very
dear to her; and I will pawn my life for her, she will never be pert to
your honour, if you'll be so good as to molest her no more, nor frighten
her again. You saw, sir, by her fit, she was in terror; she could not
help it; and though your honour intended her no harm, yet the
apprehension was almost death to her: and I had much ado to bring her to
herself again. O the little hypocrite! said he; she has all the arts of
her sex; they were born with her; and I told you awhile ago you did not
know her. But this was not the reason principally of my calling you
before me together. I find I am likely to suffer in my reputation by the
perverseness and folly of this girl. She has told you all, and perhaps
more than all; nay, I make no doubt of it; and she has written letters
(for I find she is a mighty letter-writer!) to her father and mother, and
others, as far as I know, in which representing herself as an angel of