“Pray, Mrs. Jewkes,” said I, “don’t madam me so!  I am but a silly, poor girl, set up by the gambol of fortune for a May-game.  Let us, therefore, talk upon afoot together, and that will be a favour done me.  I am now no more than a poor desolate creature, and no better than a prisoner.”

“Ay, ay,” says she, “I understand something of the matter.  You have so great power over my master that you will soon be mistress of us all; and so I will oblige you, if I can.  And I must and will call you madam, for such are the instructions of my master, and you may depend upon it I shall observe my orders.”

“You will not, I hope,” replied I, “do an unlawful or wicked thing for any master in the world.”

“Look ye!” said she.  “He is my master, and if he bids me do a thing that I can do, I think I ought to do it; and let him, who has power to command me, look to the lawfulness of it.”

“Suppose,” said I, “he should resolve to ensnare a poor young creature and ruin her, would you assist him in such wickedness?  And do you not think that to rob a person of her virtue is worse than cutting her throat?”

“Why, now,” said she, “how strangely you talk!  Are not the two sexes made for each other?  And is it not natural for a man to love a pretty woman?” And then the wretch fell a-laughing, and talk’d most impertinently, and show’d me that I had nothing to expect either from her virtue or compassion.

I am now come to the twenty-seventh day of my imprisonment.  One stratagem I have just thought of, though attended with this discouraging circumstance that I have neither friends, nor money, nor know one step of the way were I actually out of the house.  But let bulls and bears and lions and tigers and, what is worse, false, treacherous, deceitful man stand in my way, I cannot be in more danger than I now think myself in.

Mrs. Jewkes has received a letter.  She tells me, as a secret, that she has reason to think my master has found a way to satisfy my scruples.  It is by marrying me to his dreadful Swiss servant, Colbrand, and buying me of him on the wedding-day for a sum of money!  Was ever the like heard?  She says it will be my duty to obey my husband, and that when my master has paid for me, and I am surrender’d up, the Swiss is to go home again, with the money, to his former wife and children; for, she says, it is the custom of these people to have a wife in every nation.

But this, to be sure, is horrid romancing!

Friday, the thirty-sixth day of imprisonment.  Mercy on me!  What will become of me?  Here is my master come in his fine chariot!  What shall I do?  Where shall I hide myself?

He has entered and come up!

He put on a stern and a haughty air.  “Well, perverse Pamela, ungrateful creature, you do well, don’t you, to give me all this trouble and vexation?”

I could not speak, but sobb’d and sigh’d, as if my heart would break.  “Sir,” I said, “permit me to return to my parents.  That is all I have to ask.”