LETTER XVIII


DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,

I thank you a thousand tines for your goodness to me, expressed in your
last letter. I now long to get my business done, and come to my new old
lot again, as I may call it. I have been quite another thing since my
master has turned me off: and as I shall come to you an honest daughter,
what pleasure it is to what I should have had, if I could not have seen
you but as a guilty one. Well, my writing-time will soon be over, and so
I will make use of it now, and tell you all that has happened since my
last letter.

I wondered Mrs. Jervis did not call me to sup with her, and feared she
was angry; and when I had finished my letter, I longed for her coming to
bed. At last she came up, but seemed shy and reserved; and I said, My
dear Mrs. Jervis, I am glad to see you: you are not angry with me, I
hope. She said she was sorry things had gone so far; and that she had a
great deal of talk with my master, after I was gone; that he seemed moved
at what I said, and at my falling on my knees to him, and my prayer for
him, at my going away. He said I was a strange girl; he knew not what to
make of me. And is she gone? said he: I intended to say something else
to her; but she behaved so oddly, that I had not power to stop her. She
asked, if she should call me again? He said, Yes; and then, No, let her
go; it is best for her and me too; and she shall go, now I have given her
warning. Where she had it, I can't tell; but I never met with the fellow
of her in any life, at any age. She said, he had ordered her not to tell