I relate this story the more particularly because of the good-humour
there was in it, and to show the temper with which we conversed. It
was not long after this but he began every day to find fault with my
clothes, with my laces and headdresses, and, in a word, pressed me to
buy better; which, by the way, I was willing enough to do, though I did
not seem to be so, for I loved nothing in the world better than fine
clothes. I told him I must housewife the money he had lent me, or else
I should not be able to pay him again. He then told me, in a few
words, that as he had a sincere respect for me, and knew my
circumstances, he had not lent me that money, but given it me, and that
he thought I had merited it from him by giving him my company so
entirely as I had done. After this he made me take a maid, and keep
house, and his friend that come with him to Bath being gone, he obliged
me to diet him, which I did very willingly, believing, as it appeared,
that I should lose nothing by it, nor did the woman of the house fail
to find her account in it too.
We had lived thus near three months, when the company beginning to wear
away at the Bath, he talked of going away, and fain he would have me to
go to London with him. I was not very easy in that proposal, not
knowing what posture I was to live in there, or how he might use me.
But while this was in debate he fell very sick; he had gone out to a
place in Somersetshire, called Shepton, where he had some business and
was there taken very ill, and so ill that he could not travel; so he
sent his man back to Bath, to beg me that I would hire a coach and come
over to him. Before he went, he had left all his money and other
things of value with me, and what to do with them I did not know, but I
secured them as well as I could, and locked up the lodgings and went to
him, where I found him very ill indeed; however, I persuaded him to be
carried in a litter to the Bath, where there was more help and better
advice to be had.
He consented, and I brought him to the Bath, which was about fifteen
miles, as I remember. Here he continued very ill of a fever, and kept
his bed five weeks, all which time I nursed him and tended him myself,
as much and as carefully as if I had been his wife; indeed, if I had
been his wife I could not have done more. I sat up with him so much
and so often, that at last, indeed, he would not let me sit up any
longer, and then I got a pallet-bed into his room, and lay in it just
at his bed's feet.