In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be put to
nurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor but had been in
better circumstances, and who got a little livelihood by taking such as
I was supposed to be, and keeping them with all necessaries, till they
were at a certain age, in which it might be supposed they might go to
service or get their own bread.
This woman had also had a little school, which she kept to teach
children to read and to work; and having, as I have said, lived before
that in good fashion, she bred up the children she took with a great
deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.
But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very
religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house-wifely
and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in a
word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were
brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at the
dancing-school.
I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrified
with news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had
ordered that I should go to service. I was able to do but very little
service wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands and be a
drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me of often, which put me
into a great fright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service,
as they called it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young;
and I told my nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my
living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had
taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the chief
trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would
work for her, and I would work very hard.
I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I did
nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman so
much, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved me
very well.
One day after this, as she came into the room where all we poor
children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her
usual place as mistress, but as if she set herself on purpose to
observe me and see me work. I was doing something she had set me to;
as I remember, it was marking some shirts which she had taken to make,
and after a while she began to talk to me. 'Thou foolish child,' says
she, 'thou art always crying (for I was crying then); 'prithee, what
dost cry for?' 'Because they will take me away,' says I, 'and put me to
service, and I can't work housework.' 'Well, child,' says she, 'but
though you can't work housework, as you call it, you will learn it in
time, and they won't put you to hard things at first.' 'Yes, they
will,' says I, 'and if I can't do it they will beat me, and the maids
will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a little girl and I
can't do it'; and then I cried again, till I could not speak any more
to her.