hand, which, he said, was for my present supply, and told me that he would see me again before it was out; also he gave Amy half-a-crown.
When he was gone, 'Well, Amy', said I, 'are you convinced now that he is an honest as well as a true friend, and that there has been nothing, not the least appearance of anything, of what you imagined in his behaviour?' 'Yes', says Amy, 'I am, but I admire at it. He is such a friend as the world, sure, has not abundance of to show.'
'I am sure', says I, 'he is such a friend as I have long wanted, and as I have as much need of as any creature in the world has, or ever had.' And, in short, I was so overcome with the comfort of it that I sat down and cried for joy a good while, as I had formerly cried for sorrow. Amy and I went to bed that night (for Amy lay with me) pretty early, but lay chatting almost all night about it, and the girl was so transported that she got up two or three times in the night and danced about the room in her shift; in short, the girl was half distracted with the joy of it; a testimony still of her violent affection for her mistress, in which no servant ever went beyond her.
We heard no more of him for two days, but the third day he came again; then he told me, with the same kindness, that he had ordered me a supply of household goods for the furnishing the house; that, in particular, he had sent me back all the goods that he had seized for rent, which consisted, indeed, of the best of my former furniture. 'And now', says he, 'I'll tell you what I have had in my head for you for your present supply, and that is', says he, 'that the house being well furnished, you shall let it out to lodgings for the summer gentry', says he, 'by which you will easily get a good comfortable subsistence, especially seeing you shall pay me no rent for two years, nor after neither, unless you can afford it.'
This was the first view I had of living comfortably indeed, and it was a very probable way, I must confess, seeing we had very good conveniences, six rooms on a floor, and three stories high. While he was laying down the scheme of my management, came a cart to the door with a load of goods, and an upholsterer's man to put them up. They were chiefly the furniture of two rooms which he had carried away for his two years' rent, with two fine cabinets, and some pier-glasses out of the parlour, and several other valuable things.
These were all restored to their places, and he told me he gave them me freely, as a satisfaction for the cruelty he had used me with before; and the furniture of one room being finished and set up, he told me he would furnish one chamber for himself, and would come and be one of my lodgers, if I would give him leave.
I told him he ought not to ask me leave, who had so much right to make himself welcome. So the house began to look in some tolerable figure, and clean; the garden also, in about a fortnight's work, began to look something less like a wilderness than it used to do; and he ordered me to put up a bill for letting rooms, reserving one for himself, to come to as he saw occasion.
When all was done to his mind, as to placing the goods, he seemed very well pleased, and we dined together again of his own providing; and the upholsterer's man gone, after dinner he took me by the hand. 'Come now, madam', says he, 'you must show me your house' (for he had a mind to see everything over again). 'No, sir', said I; 'but I'll go show you your house, if you please'; so we went up through all the rooms, and
