Didactic fiction; Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
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."
Amelia answered that she liked her the better: for, indeed, in her
present disposition, Amelia was as much exasperated against wicked
women as the virtuous mistress of the house, or any other virtuous
woman could be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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