I must acknowledge, the notion of being discovered carried with it so many frightful ideas, and hurried my thoughts so much, that I was scarce myself any more than Amy, so dreadful a thing is a load of guilt upon the mind.
And yet when Amy began the second time to talk thus abominably of killing the poor child, of murdering her, and swore by her Maker that she would, so that I began to see that she was in earnest, I was farther terrified a great deal, and it helped to bring me to myself again in other cases.
We laid our heads together then to see if it was possible to discover by what means she had learned to talk so, and how she (I mean my girl) came to know that her mother had married a husband; but it would not do, the girl would acknowledge nothing, and gave but a very imperfect account of things still, being disgusted to the last degree with Amy's leaving her so abruptly as she did.
Well, Amy went to the house where the boy was; but it was all one, there they had only heard a confused story of the lady somebody, they knew not who, which the same wench had told them, but they gave no heed to it at all. Amy told them how foolishly the girl had acted, and how she had carried on the whimsey so far, in spite of all they could say to her; that she had taken it so ill, she would see her no more, and so she might e'en go to service again if she would, for she (Amy) would have nothing to do with her unless she humbled herself and changed her note, and that quickly too.
The good old gentleman, who had been the benefactor to them all, was greatly concerned at it, and the good woman his wife was grieved beyond all expressing, and begged her ladyship (meaning Amy), not to resent it; they promised, too, they would talk with her about it, and the old gentlewoman added, with some astonishment, "Sure she cannot be such a fool but she will be prevailed with to hold her tongue, when she has it from your own mouth that you are not her mother, and sees that it disobliges your ladyship to have her insist upon it." And so Amy came away with some expectation that it would be stopped here.
But the girl was such a fool for all that, and persisted in it obstinately, notwithstanding all they could say to her; nay, her sister begged and entreated her not to play the fool, for that it would ruin her too, and that the lady (meaning Amy) would abandon them both.
Well, notwithstanding this, she insisted, I say, upon it, and which was worse, the longer it lasted the more she began to drop Amy's ladyship, and would have it that the Lady Roxana was her mother, and that she had made some inquiries about it, and did not doubt but she should find her out.
When it was come to this, and we found there was nothing to be done with the girl, but that she was so obstinately bent upon the search after me, that she ventured to forfeit all she had in view; I say, when I found it was come to this, I began to be more serious in my preparations of my going beyond sea, and particularly, it gave me some reason to fear that there was something in it. But the following accident put me beside all my measures, and struck me into the greatest confusion that ever I was in my life.
I was so near going abroad that my spouse and I had taken measures for our going off; and because I would be sure not to go too public, but so as to take away all possibility of being seen, I had made some exception to my spouse against going in the ordinary public passage boats. My pretence to him was the promiscuous crowds in those vessels, want of convenience, and the like. So he took the hint, and found me out an English merchant-ship, which was bound for Rotterdam, and getting soon acquainted with the master, he hired his whole ship, that is to say, his great cabin, for I do not mean his ship for freight, that so we had all the conveniences possible for our passage; and all things being near ready, he brought home the captain one day to dinner with him, that I might see him, and be acquainted a little with him. So we came after dinner to talk of the ship and the conveniences on board, and the captain pressed me earnestly to come on board and see the ship, intimating that he would treat us as well as he could; and in discourse I happened to say I hoped he had no other passengers. He said no, he had not; but, he said, his wife had courted him a good while to let her go over to Holland with him, for he always used that trade, but he never could think of venturing all he had in one bottom; but if I went with him he thought to take her and her kinswoman along with him this voyage, that they might both wait upon me; and so added, that if we would do him the honour to dine on board the next day, he would bring his wife on board, the better to make us welcome.
Who now could have believed the devil had any snare at the bottom of all this? or that I was in any danger on such an occasion, so remote and out of the way as this was? But the event was the oddest that could be thought of. As it happened, Amy was not at home when we accepted this invitation, and so she was left out of the company; but instead of Amy, we took our honest, good-humoured, never-to-be-omitted friend the Quaker, one of the best creatures that ever lived, sure; and who, besides a thousand good qualities unmixed with one bad one, was particularly excellent for being the best company in the world; though I think I had carried Amy too, if she had not been engaged in this unhappy girl's affair. For on a sudden the girl was lost, and no news was to be heard of her; and Amy had haunted her to every place she could think of, that it was likely to find her in; but all the news she could hear of her was, that she was gone to an old comrade's house of hers, which she called sister, and who was married to a master of a ship, who lived at Redriff; and even this the jade never told me. It seems, when this girl was directed by Amy to get her some breeding, go to the boarding-school, and the like, she was recommended to a boarding-school at Camberwell, and there she contracted an acquaintance with a young lady (so they are all called), her bedfellow, that they called sisters, and promised never to break off their acquaintance.