When my mother sent away the girl, she affirmed she had not the least intention of committing this bad action; but after she was left alone with us, she looked on me, and then on the little lady-babe, and she wept over me to think she was obliged to leave me to the charge of a careless girl, debarred from my own natural food, while she was nursing another person’s child.

The laced cap and the fine cambric robe of the little Harriot were lying on the table ready to be put on:  in these she dressed me, only just to see how pretty her own dear baby would look in missy’s fine clothes.  When she saw me thus adorned, she said to me, “O, my dear Ann, you look as like missy as any thing can be.  I am sure my lady herself, if she were well enough to see you, would not know the difference.”  She said these words aloud, and while she was speaking, a wicked thought came into her head—­How easy it would be to change these children!  On which she hastily dressed Harriot in my coarse raiment.  She had no sooner finished the transformation of miss Lesley into the poor Ann Withers, than the girl returned, and carried her away, without the least suspicion that it was not the same infant that she had brought thither.

It was wonderful that no one discovered that I was not the same child.  Every fresh face that came into the room, filled the nurse with terror.  The servants still continued to pay their compliments to the baby in the same form as usual, saying, How like it is to its papa!  Nor did sir Edward himself perceive the difference, his lady’s illness probably engrossing all his attention at the time; though indeed gentlemen seldom take much notice of very young children.

When lady Harriot began to recover, and the nurse saw me in her arms caressed as her own child, all fears of detection were over; but the pangs of remorse then seized her:  as the dear sick lady hung with tears of fondness over me, she thought she should have died with sorrow for having so cruelly deceived her.

When I was a year old Mrs. Withers was discharged; and because she had been observed to nurse me with uncommon care and affection, and was seen to shed many tears at parting from me; to reward her fidelity sir Edward settled a small pension on her, and she was allowed to come every Sunday to dine in the housekeeper’s room, and see her little lady.

When she went home it might have been expected she would have neglected the child she had so wickedly stolen; instead of which she nursed it with the greatest tenderness, being very sorry for what she had done:  all the ease she could ever find for her troubled conscience, was in her extreme care of this injured child; and in the weekly visits to its father’s house she constantly brought it with her.  At the time I have the earliest recollection of her, she was become a widow, and with the pension sir Edward allowed her, and some plain work she did for our family, she maintained herself and her supposed daughter.