Chapter ii. — In which Amelia visits her husband.
Amelia, after much anxious thinking, in which she sometimes flattered herself that her husband was less guilty than she had at first imagined him, and that he had some good excuse to make for himself (for, indeed, she was not so able as willing to make one for him), at length resolved to set out for the bailiff’s castle. Having therefore strictly recommended the care of her children to her good landlady, she sent for a hackney coach, and ordered the coachman to drive to Gray’s-inn-lane.
When she came to the house, and asked for the captain, the bailiff’s wife, who came to the door, guessing, by the greatness of her beauty and the disorder of her dress, that she was a young lady of pleasure, answered surlily, “Captain! I do not know of any captain that is here, not I!” For this good woman was, as well as dame Purgante in Prior, a bitter enemy to all whores, especially to those of the handsome kind; for some such she suspected to go shares with her in a certain property to which the law gave her the sole right.
Amelia replied she was certain that Captain Booth was there. “Well, if he is so,” cries the bailiff’s wife, “you may come into the kitchen if you will, and he shall be called down to you if you have any business with him.” At the same time she muttered something to herself, and concluded a little more intelligibly, though still in a muttering voice, that she kept no such house.
Amelia, whose innocence gave her no suspicion of the true cause of this good woman’s sullenness, was frightened, and began to fear she knew not what. At last she made a shift to totter into the kitchen, when the mistress of the house asked her, “Well, madam, who shall I tell the captain wants to speak with him?”
“I ask your pardon, madam,” cries Amelia; “in my confusion I really forgot you did not know me—tell him, if you please, that I am his wife.”
“And you are indeed his wife, madam?” cries Mrs. Bailiff, a little softened.
“Yes, indeed, and upon my honour,” answers Amelia.
“If this be the case,” cries the other, “you may walk up-stairs if you please. Heaven forbid I should part man and wife! Indeed, I think they can never be too much together. But I never will suffer any bad doings in my house, nor any of the town ladies to come to gentlemen here.”