On Thursday February 1, Elizabeth was put into a coach and drove with
her mother and two other women to Mother Wells' house in Enfield Wash,
where they were met by the girl's two masters and several friends. The
object of the visit was to prove if the description given by her of the
room, in which she was confined, was correct, and if she could pick out
from a number of persons the woman who had cut off her stays and locked
her up. As to how far the room, as seen by Elizabeth's friends, at all
resembled what she had told them, it is impossible to be certain. It
assuredly was very different from the place which Alderman Chitty swore
she had described, containing a quantity of hay, old saddles, and other
things that the girl had apparently not noticed, even though she had
been there a month; while there was no old picture above the
mantelpiece--nothing, indeed, but cobwebs--and there was no grate,
though she had sworn she had taken out of it the bedgown or jacket she
had come home in. Besides,--and this was more serious--there was not a
sign of the pent-house on which, she said, she had jumped after tearing
away the boards at the north window; and one of the witnesses declared
that you had only to push open the _east_ window to get out of it with
perfect ease, and that he himself had leaned out and shaken hands with
his wife, who was standing on the ground which rose on that side of the
house. But then the witnesses were not at all agreed among themselves
what Elizabeth had _really_ said, so again we are unable to make up our
minds what to believe.
After she had seen the room, she was taken into the parlour where eight
or ten people were sitting, and it is curious that now everyone tells
the same tale. On one side of the fireplace sat Mother Wells, and on the
other Mary Squires.
Mary Squires was a gipsy, tall and swarthy, very ill made and
extraordinarily ugly, and altogether a person whom it would be
impossible to forget. At the time of Elizabeth's entrance she was
sitting crouched up, with a white handkerchief on her head such as women
often wore, and over it a hat, while a short pipe was in her hand.
Several more persons were on the same side of the room, in a sort of
circle round the fire.
Elizabeth glanced towards them. Her eyes rested first on Mother Wells
and then looked past her.
'That is the woman who cut off my stays,' she said, pointing to the
gipsy. At these words Mary Squires rose and came up to the girl,
throwing aside her hat and handkerchief as she did so.
'Me rob you?' she cried. 'I hope you will not swear my life away, for I
never saw you. Pray, madam, look at this face; if you have once seen it
you must remember it, for God Almighty I think never made such another.'
'I know you very well,' answered Elizabeth; 'I know you too well, to my
sorrow.'
'Pray, madam, when do you say I robbed you?'
'It was on the first day of this New Year,' replied Elizabeth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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