Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded

LETTER XVII MY DEAREST DAUGHTER,

Welcome, welcome, ten times welcome shall you be to us; for you come

to us innocent, and happy, and honest; and you are the staff of our old

age, and our comfort. And though we cannot do for you as we would, yet,

fear not, we shall live happily together; and what with my diligent

labour, and your poor mother's spinning, and your needle-work, I make no

doubt we shall do better and better. Only your poor mother's eyes begin

to fail her; though, I bless God, I am as strong and able, and willing

to labour as ever; and, O my dear child! your virtue has made me, I

think, stronger and better than I was before. What blessed things are

trials and temptations, when we have the strength to resist and subdue

them! But I am uneasy about those same four guineas; I think you should give

them back again to your master; and yet I have broken them. Alas! I have

only three left; but I will borrow the fourth, if I can, part upon my

wages, and part of Mrs. Mumford, and send the whole sum back to you,

that you may return it, against John comes next, if he comes again

before you. I want to know how you come. I fancy honest John will be glad to bear

you company part of the way, if your master is not so cross as to forbid

him. And if I know time enough, your mother will go one five miles, and

I will go ten on the way, or till I meet you, as far as one holiday will

go; for that I can get leave to make on such an occasion.

And we shall receive you with more pleasure than we had at your birth,

when all the worst was over; or than we ever had in our lives. And so God bless you till the happy time comes! say both your mother and

I, which is all at present, from

Your truly loving PARENTS.

LETTER XVIII

DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,

I thank you a thousand times 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 me all: but she believed he would never

offer any thing to me again; and I might stay, she fancied, if I would

beg it as a favour; though she was not sure neither.