me: Cou'd I bind you to me by confidence, by favours, by affection, there is nothing I would not do to recompenfe and reward your attachment."-" Madam," replied Henry, "fo long as I receive the wages of Doctor Cawdle, you are intitled to every fervice I can render you, confiftent with honour and my duty to him."

"What honour and what duty do you owe to him, which you are not in an equal degree bound to fulfil towards me? Nay, if you are not loft to every manly feeling, you will own that as a woman I have a fuperior claim to your attentions: if you are fway'd by interest, can you hefitate between me and him? If you are capable of being touch'd by a more generous paffion, where can you more worthily bestow it, than on one who has no fcruple to confefs the impreffion you have made upon

her heart?"

"On your heart!" cried Henry, " is it poffible you can be ferious in this declaration? or am I only to regard it as the wandering of a feverish delirium?" "Regard it in no other fenfe," the replied, "than as the frank confeffion of a woman, who is above the mean practice of difguifing what the feels, and E 5

whose

whofe mind is made up to the conviction, that what nature dictates must be right."" If that be your rule, Madam," quoth Henry,

you cannot be offended with me for adopting it; therefore, as my nature dictates to me the impropriety of holding any further converfation with you upon this fubject, you will pardon me if I cut it fhort and take my leave."

"Perverse, provoking, obftinate, hard fate!" exclaim'd the difappointed fair, as foon as he had departed; "thus is the patience of the faints for ever exercis'd by trials and temptations. But, thanks to the Spirit, through the affiftance of grace, I have withstood the importunities of the flesh; I have wrestled with the wicked one, and obtain'd the victory. Now, Jemima, thou may'st rejoice and triumph"-here the burst into an agony of pafffon, fobb ng and weeping after a piteous fort, the tears trickling off her greafy cheeks like water from the feathers of a duck.

Before this paroxyfm was well over, Kinloch prefented himfelf at her bed-fide, gorgeously arrayed in his robe of plaid, with the dofe of wormwood-beer and lizard powder oftentatiously held forth in his right hand,

whilft with the left he drew back the curtains, as if to give a greater pomp and richer flow of drapery to the introduction of his perfon, and of the precious contents, with which his goblet was charged.

"I have brought it," quoth the vaunting empiric," with my own hands: a medicine of the rareft virtues; the paragon of wonder-working art; a panacea to reftore exhausted nature, though the were at her laft gafp."-" Is the fellow mad?" cried Jemima: "what is it you are talking about ?"-" No matter, no matter," replied Alexander; " tafte and try !" with that he put the dofe into her hand. "What naftiness have you given me?" cried

fhe;

"and what is it to do ?"-" It is," faid he, "an anti-inebriating julep, a fheather of the fpicula, with which inflammatory liquors transfix the vitals: I don't quite fay it will make you immortal, but it will keep off death, though he were at the door."" Then take it yourself, you skeleton," cried the dame; and forthwith vollied the whole contents of the potion in Alexander's face, who inftantly fled out of the room, covered with the filthy mixture, fputtering and fwearing he would fooner E 6 prefcribe

prefcribe to the whore of Babylon, than fuch a drunken vixen as fhe was.

CHAPTER XI.

Meditations in a Kitchen.

WHEN Jemima was left to reflect ferioufly upon the rebuff she had met from Henry, and found it no longer poffible to turn it to her credit by any fophiftry or felfdelufion that her vanity could fuggeft, nothing remained but to foothe herfelf with fchemes and projects of revenge; and in the course of thefe meditations it naturally occurred to her, that whilft fhe kept fo fine a girl in her fervice as Sufan May, he would never be without a rival in her own family; and as this was not the firft mortification of the fort she had encountered fince that girl had been about her perfon, fhe began to think that in good policy fhe could not be too quick in getting rid of her. The question however had its con as well as pro, for Sufan was a decoy-duck, that brought game to the net, as in the inftance of the afore-mentioned Juftice Blachford, who found

found it worth his while to bestow many courteous attentions upon the miftrefs, by way of mafque to his approaches in another quarter.

Although few gentlewomen in Mrs. Cawdle's circumstances would have had the condescension to be fo explicit with a servant just hired into their family, yet that gracious perfonage, mindful, no doubt, of the time when The herself took poft in that low order of fociety, had neither that pride of virtue nor that delicacy of fentiment about her to be wounded by reflections of this fort; faithful to her antient habits, she was in the practice of plain dealing on those occafions where other ladies ufe fineffe, and by making her wishes well understood was fure of bringing them to a speedy iffue at all events, and avoiding that most painful of all fituations, a state of expectation and fufpenfe. At the fame time when those wishes were croffed and thwarted, the good lady had a due fenfe of her own dignity, and refented a disappointment with as much fpirit as her warmeft admirers could with her to have; and never was this fpirit more thoroughly called forth than at the prefent moment by Henry's unaccountable neglect of her moft gracious advances; a circumftance that

feemed