I was indeed sensibly affected with his condition, and with the
apprehension of losing such a friend as he was, and was like to be to
me, and I used to sit and cry by him many hours together. However, at
last he grew better, and gave hopes that he would recover, as indeed he
did, though very slowly.
Were it otherwise than what I am going to say, I should not be backward
to disclose it, as it is apparent I have done in other cases in this
account; but I affirm, that through all this conversation, abating the
freedom of coming into the chamber when I or he was in bed, and abating
the necessary offices of attending him night and day when he was sick,
there had not passed the least immodest word or action between us. Oh
that it had been so to the last!
After some time he gathered strength and grew well apace, and I would
have removed my pallet-bed, but he would not let me, till he was able
to venture himself without anybody to sit up with him, and then I
removed to my own chamber.
He took many occasions to express his sense of my tenderness and
concern for him; and when he grew quite well, he made me a present of
fifty guineas for my care and, as he called it, for hazarding my life
to save his.
And now he made deep protestations of a sincere inviolable affection
for me, but all along attested it to be with the utmost reserve for my
virtue and his own. I told him I was fully satisfied of it. He
carried it that length that he protested to me, that if he was naked in
bed with me, he would as sacredly preserve my virtue as he would defend
it if I was assaulted by a ravisher. I believed him, and told him I
did so; but this did not satisfy him, he would, he said, wait for some
opportunity to give me an undoubted testimony of it.
It was a great while after this that I had occasion, on my own
business, to go to Bristol, upon which he hired me a coach, and would
go with me, and did so; and now indeed our intimacy increased. From
Bristol he carried me to Gloucester, which was merely a journey of
pleasure, to take the air; and here it was our hap to have no lodging
in the inn but in one large chamber with two beds in it. The master of
the house going up with us to show his rooms, and coming into that
room, said very frankly to him, 'Sir, it is none of my business to
inquire whether the lady be your spouse or no, but if not, you may lie
as honestly in these two beds as if you were in two chambers,' and with
that he pulls a great curtain which drew quite across the room and
effectually divided the beds. 'Well,' says my friend, very readily,
'these beds will do, and as for the rest, we are too near akin to lie
together, though we may lodge near one another'; and this put an honest
face on the thing too. When we came to go to bed, he decently went out
of the room till I was in bed, and then went to bed in the bed on his
own side of the room, but lay there talking to me a great while.