time, and as matters happen, and send the scribble to you as I have
opportunity; and if I don't every time, in form, subscribe as I ought, I
am sure you will always believe, that it is not for want of duty. So I
will begin where I left off, about the talk between Mrs. Jervis and me,
for me to ask to stay.

Unknown to Mrs. Jervis, I put a project, as I may call it, in practice.
I thought with myself some days ago, Here I shall go home to my poor
father and mother, and have nothing on my back, that will be fit for my
condition; for how should your poor daughter look with a silk night-gown,
silken petticoats, cambric head-clothes, fine holland linen, laced shoes
that were my lady's; and fine stockings! And how in a little while must
these have looked, like old cast-offs, indeed, and I looked so for
wearing them! And people would have said, (for poor folks are envious as
well as rich,) See there Goody Andrews's daughter, turned home from her
fine place! What a tawdry figure she makes! And how well that garb
becomes her poor parents' circumstances!--And how would they look upon
me, thought I to myself, when they should come to be threadbare and worn
out? And how should I look, even if I could purchase homespun clothes,
to dwindle into them one by one, as I got them?--May be, an old silk
gown, and a linsey-woolsey petticoat, and the like. So, thought I, I had
better get myself at once equipped in the dress that will become my
condition; and though it may look but poor to what I have been used to
wear of late days, yet it will serve me, when I am with you, for a good
holiday and Sunday suit; and what, by a blessing on my industry, I may,
perhaps, make shift to keep up to.

So, as I was saying, unknown to any body, I bought of farmer Nichols's
wife and daughters a good sad-coloured stuff, of their own spinning,
enough to make me a gown and two petticoats; and I made robings and