I was so pleased that I resolved to go with Amy the next day to see the lodgings, and see the woman of the house, and see how I liked them; but if I was pleased with the general, I was much more pleased with the particulars, for the gentlewoman —I must call her so, though she was a Quaker—was a most courteous, obliging, mannerly person, perfectly well-bred and perfectly well-humoured, and, in short, the most agreeable conversation that ever I met with; and, which was worth all, so grave, and yet so pleasant and so merry, that 'tis scarcely possible for me to express how I was pleased and delighted with her company; and particularly, I was so pleased that I would go away no more; so I e'en took up my lodging there the very first night.
In the meantime, though it took up Amy almost a month so entirely to put off all the appearances of housekeeping, as above, it need take me up no time to relate it; 'tis enough to say that Amy quitted all that part of the world and came pack and package to me, and here we took up our abode.
I was now in a perfect retreat indeed, remote from the eyes of all that ever had seen me, and as much out of the way of being ever seen or heard of by any of the gang that used to follow me as if I had been among the mountains in Lancashire; for when did a blue garter or a coach-and-six come into a little narrow passage in the Minories or Goodman's Fields? And, as there was no fear of them, so really I had no desire to see them, or so much as to hear from them any more as long as I lived.
I seemed in a little hurry while Amy came and went so every day at first, but, when that was over, I lived here perfectly retired, and with a most pleasant and agreeable lady; I must call her so, for, though a Quaker, she had a full share of good breeding, sufficient to her if she had been a duchess; in a word, she was the most agreeable creature in her conversation, as I said before, that ever I met with.
I pretended, after I had been there some time, to be extremely in love with the dress of the Quakers, and this pleased her so much that she would needs dress me up one day in a suit of her own clothes; but my real design was to see whether it would pass upon me for a disguise.
Amy was struck with the novelty, though I had not mentioned my design to her, and, when the Quaker was gone out of the room, says Amy, 'I guess your meaning; it is a perfect disguise to you. Why, you look quite another body; I should not have known you myself. Nay', says Amy, 'more than that, it makes you look ten years younger than you did.'
Nothing could please me better than that, and when Amy repeated it, I was so fond of it that I asked my Quaker (I won't call her landlady; 'tis indeed too coarse a word for her, and she deserved a much better)—I say, I asked her if she would sell it. I told her I was so fond of it that I would give her enough to buy her a better suit. She declined it at first, but I soon perceived that it was chiefly in good manners, because I should not dishonour myself, as she called it, to put on her old clothes but, if I pleased to accept of them, she would give me them for my dressing-clothes, and go with me, and buy a suit for me that might be better worth my wearing.
But as I conversed in a very frank, open manner with her, I bid her, do the like with me; that I made no scruples of such things, but that if she would let me have them I would satisfy her. So she let me know
