But the next morning, Glumdalclitch, my little nurse, told me the whole matter, which she had cunningly picked out from her mother.  The poor girl laid me on her bosom, and fell a-weeping with shame and grief.  She apprehended some mischief would happen to me from rude vulgar folks, who might squeeze me to death, or break one of my limbs by taking me in their hands.  She had also observed how modest I was in my nature, how nicely I regarded my honor, and what an indignity conceive it to be exposed for money, as a public spectacle, to the meanest of the people.  She said her papa and mamma had promised that Grildrig should be hers, but now she found they meant to serve her as they did last year when they pretended to give her a lamb, and yet as soon as it was fat sold it to a butcher.  For my own part I may truly affirm that I was less concerned than my nurse.  I had a strong hope, which left me, that I should one day recover my liberty; to the ignominy of being carried about for a monster, I considered myself to be a perfect stranger in the country, and that such a misfortune could never be charged upon me as a reproach if ever I should return to England; since the king of Great Britain himself, in my condition, must have undergone the same distress.

My master, pursuant to the advice of his friend, carried me in a box the next market-day, to the neighboring town, and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion[48] behind him.  The box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet holes to let in air.  The girl had been so careful as to put the quilt of her baby’s bed into it, for me to lie down on.  However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it were but of half an hour.  For the horse went about forty feet at every step, and trotted so high that the agitation was equal to the rising and falling of a ship in a great storm, but much more frequent; our journey was somewhat farther than from London to St. Alban’s.  My master alighted at an inn which he used to frequent; and after consulting a while with the innkeeper and making some necessary preparations, he hired the grultrud, or crier, to give notice through the town, of a strange creature to be seen at the sign of the Green Eagle, not so big as a splacnuck (an animal in that country, very finely shaped, about six feet long), and in every part of the body resembling a human creature, could speak several words, and perform a hundred diverting tricks.

I was placed upon a table in the largest room of the inn, which might be near three hundred feet square.  My little nurse stood on a low stool close to the table, to take care of me, and direct what I should do.  My master, to avoid a crowd, would suffer only thirty people at a time to see me.  I walked about on the table as the girl commanded.  She asked me questions, as far as she knew my understanding of the language reached, and I answered them as loud