very well, though I said no more to him at that time, and I resolved, though I would make a very good figure, I say I resolved to abate a little of my expense, and draw in, live closer, and save something, if not so much as he proposed to me. It was near the end of the year that Sir Robert made this proposal to me, and, when the year was up, I went to his house in the City, and there I told him I came to thank him for his scheme of frugality; that I had been studying much upon it, and though I had not been able to mortify myself so much as to lay up a thousand pounds a year, yet, as I had not come to him for my interest half-yearly, as was usual, I was now come to let him know that I had resolved to lay up that seven hundred pounds a year, and never use a penny of it, desiring him to help me to put it out to advantage.
Sir Robert, a man thoroughly versed in arts of improving money, but thoroughly honest, said to me, 'Madam, I am glad you approve of the method that I proposed to you; but you have begun wrong: you should have come for your interest at the half-year, and then you had had the money to put out. Now you have lost half a year's interest of £350, which is £9; for I had but 5 per cent, on the mortgage.'
'Well, well, sir', says I, 'can you put this out for me now?'
'Let it lie, madam', says he, 'till the next year, and then I'll put out your £1400 together, and in the meantime I'll pay you interest for the £700.' So he gave me his bill for the money, which he told me should be no less than £6 per cent. Sir Robert Clayton's bill was what nobody would refuse, so I thanked him, and let it lie; and next year I did the same, and the third year Sir Robert got me a good mortgage for £2200 at £6 per cent, interest. So I had £132 a year added to my income, which was a very satisfying article.
But I return to my history. As I have said, I found that my measures were all wrong; the posture I set up in exposed me to innumerable visitors of the kind I have mentioned above. I was cried up for a vast fortune, and one that Sir Robert Clayton managed for; and Sir Robert Clayton was courted for me as much as I was for myself. But I had given Sir Robert his cue. I had told him my opinion of matrimony, in just the same terms as I had done my merchant, and he came into it presently. He owned that my observation was just, and that, if I valued my liberty, as I knew my fortune, and that it was in my own hands, I was to blame if I gave it away to any one.
But Sir Robert knew nothing of my design, that I aimed at being a kept mistress, and to have a handsome maintenance; and that I was still for getting money, and laying it up too, as much as he could desire me, only by a worse way.
However, Sir Robert came seriously to me one day, and told me he had an offer of matrimony to make to me that was beyond all that he had heard had offered themselves, and this was a merchant. Sir Robert and I agreed exactly in our notions of a merchant. Sir Robert said, and I found it to be true, that a true-bred merchant is the best gentleman in the nation; that in knowledge, in manners, in judgment of things, the merchant outdid many of the nobility; that, having once mastered the world, and being above the demand of business, though no real estate, they were then superior to most gentlemen, even in estate; that a merchant in flush business and a capital stock is able to spend more money than a gentleman of £5000 a year estate; that while a merchant spent, he only
