I now began to think this necessary woman might help me a little in my
low condition to some business, for I would gladly have turned my hand
to any honest employment if I could have got it. But here she was
deficient; honest business did not come within her reach. If I had
been younger, perhaps she might have helped me to a spark, but my
thoughts were off that kind of livelihood, as being quite out of the
way after fifty, which was my case, and so I told her.
She invited me at last to come, and be at her house till I could find
something to do, and it should cost me very little, and this I gladly
accepted of. And now living a little easier, I entered into some
measures to have my little son by my last husband taken off; and this
she made easy too, reserving a payment only of #5 a year, if I could
pay it. This was such a help to me, that for a good while I left off
the wicked trade that I had so newly taken up; and gladly I would have
got my bread by the help of my needle if I could have got work, but
that was very hard to do for one that had no manner of acquaintance in
the world.
However, at last I got some quilting work for ladies' beds, petticoats,
and the like; and this I liked very well, and worked very hard, and
with this I began to live; but the diligent devil, who resolved I
should continue in his service, continually prompted me to go out and
take a walk, that is to say, to see if anything would offer in the old
way.
One evening I blindly obeyed his summons, and fetched a long circuit
through the streets, but met with no purchase, and came home very weary
and empty; but not content with that, I went out the next evening too,
when going by an alehouse I saw the door of a little room open, next
the very street, and on the table a silver tankard, things much in use
in public-houses at that time. It seems some company had been drinking
there, and the careless boys had forgot to take it away.
I went into the box frankly, and setting the silver tankard on the
corner of the bench, I sat down before it, and knocked with my foot; a
boy came presently, and I bade him fetch me a pint of warm ale, for it
was cold weather; the boy ran, and I heard him go down the cellar to
draw the ale. While the boy was gone, another boy came into the room,
and cried, 'D' ye call?' I spoke with a melancholy air, and said, 'No,
child; the boy is gone for a pint of ale for me.' While I sat here, I heard the woman in the bar say, 'Are they all gone
in the five?' which was the box I sat in, and the boy said, 'Yes.' 'Who
fetched the tankard away?' says the woman. 'I did,' says another boy;
'that's it,' pointing, it seems, to another tankard, which he had
fetched from another box by mistake; or else it must be, that the rogue
forgot that he had not brought it in, which certainly he had not.