126
THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS
says my governess. 'I must wait, then, till he recovers'; and adds, 'I hope it will not be long.'
Away she comes to me, and tells me this story. 'I have found out your fine gentleman, and a fine gentleman he was', says she; 'but, mercy on him, he is in a sad pickle now. I wonder what the d you have done to him; why, you have almost killed him.' I looked at her with disorder enough. 'I killed him!' says I; 'you must mistake the person; I am sure I did nothing to him; he was very well when I left him', said I, 'only drunk and fast asleep.' 'I know nothing of that', says she; 'but he is in a sad pickle now'; and so she told me all that her friend had said. 'Well, then', says I, 'he fell into bad hands after I left him, for I left him safe enough.'
About ten days after, my governess goes again to her friend, to introduce her to this gentleman; she had inquired other ways in the meantime, and found that he was about again, so she got leave to speak with him.
She was a woman of an admirable address, and wanted nobody to introduce her; she told her tale much better than I shall be able to tell it for her, for she was mistress of her tongue, as I said already. She told him that she came, though a stranger, with a single design of doing him a service, and he should find she had no other end in it; that as she came purely on so friendly an account, she begged a promise from him, that if he did not accept what she should officiously propose, he would not take it ill that she meddled with what was not her business; she assured him that as what she had to say was a secret that belonged to him only, so whether he accepted her offer or not, it should remain a secret to all the world, unless he exposed it himself; nor should his refusing her service in it make her so little show her respect as to do him the least injury, so that he should be entirely at liberty to act as he thought fit.
He looked very shy at first, and said he knew nothing that related to him that required much secrecy; that he had never done any man any wrong, and cared not what anybody might say of him; that it was no part of his character to be unjust to anybody, nor could he imagine in what any man could render him any service; but that if it was as she said, he could not take it ill from any one that should endeavour to serve him; and so, as it were, left her at liberty either to tell him or not to tell him, as she thought fit.
She found him so perfectly indifferent, that she was almost afraid to enter into the point with him; but, however, after some other circumlocutions, she told him, that by a strange and unaccountable accident she came to have a particular knowledge of the late unhappy adventure he had fallen into, and that in such a manner that there was nobody in the world but herself and him that were acquainted with it, no, not the very person that was with him.
He looked a little angrily at first. 'What adventure?' said he. 'Why, sir', said she, "of your being robbed coming from Knightsbr—; Hampstead, sir, I should say', says she. 'Be not surprised, sir', says she, 'that I am able to tell you every step you took that day from the cloister in Smithfield to the Spring Garden at Knightsbridge, and thence to the in the Strand, and how you were left asleep in the coach afterwards. I say, let not this surprise you, for, sir, I do not come to make a booty of you, I ask nothing of you, and I assure you the woman that was with you knows nothing who you are, and never shall; and yet perhaps I may serve you further
