This moved my good motherly nurse, so that she from that time resolved
I should not go to service yet; so she bid me not cry, and she would
speak to Mr. Mayor, and I should not go to service till I was bigger.
Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to service was
such a frightful thing to me, that if she had assured me I should not
have gone till I was twenty years old, it would have been the same to
me; I should have cried, I believe, all the time, with the very
apprehension of its being to be so at last.
When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be angry with
me. 'And what would you have?' says she; 'don't I tell you that you
shall not go to service till your are bigger?' 'Ay,' said I, 'but then
I must go at last.' 'Why, what?' said she; 'is the girl mad? What
would you be--a gentlewoman?' 'Yes,' says I, and cried heartily till I
roared out again.
This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be sure it
would. 'Well, madam, forsooth,' says she, gibing at me, 'you would be
a gentlewoman; and pray how will you come to be a gentlewoman? What!
will you do it by your fingers' end?' 'Yes,' says I again, very innocently.
'Why, what can you earn?' says she; 'what can you get at your work?' 'Threepence,' said I, 'when I spin, and fourpence when I work plain
work.' 'Alas! poor gentlewoman,' said she again, laughing, 'what will that do
for thee?' 'It will keep me,' says I, 'if you will let me live with you.' And
this I said in such a poor petitioning tone, that it made the poor
woman's heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.
'But,' says she, 'that will not keep you and buy you clothes too; and
who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?' says she, and smiled all
the while at me.
'I will work harder, then,' says I, 'and you shall have it all.' 'Poor child! it won't keep you,' says she; 'it will hardly keep you in
victuals.' 'Then I will have no victuals,' says I, again very innocently; 'let me
but live with you.' 'Why, can you live without victuals?' says she.
'Yes,' again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure, and still
I cried heartily.