The cruel and interested care taken to recover me sav'd
an odious life: which, instead of the happiness and joys it
had overflow'd in, all of a sudden presented no view before
me of any thing but the depth of misery, horror, and the
sharpest affliction.
Thus I lay six weeks, in the struggles of youth and
constitution, against the friendly efforts of death, which I
constantly invoked to my relief and deliverance, but which
proving too weak for my wish, I recovered at length, tho'
into a state of stupefaction and despair that threatened me
with the loss of my senses, and a mad-house.
Time, however, that great comforter in ordinary, began
to assuage the violence of my sufferings, and to numb my
feeling of them. My health return'd to me, though I still
retain'd an air of grief, dejection, and languor, which
taking off the ruddiness of my country complexion, render'd
it rather more delicate and affecting.
The landlady had all this while officiously provided,
and taken care that I wanted for nothing: and as soon as she
saw me retriev'd into a condition of answering her purpose,
one day, after we had dined together, she congratulated me
on my recovery, the merit of which she took entirely to her-
self, and all this by way of introduction to a most terrible
and scurvy epilogue: "You are now," says she, "Miss Fanny,
tolerably well, and you are very welcome to stay in the lodg-
ings as long as you please; you see I have ask'd you for
nothing this long time, but truly I have a call to make up a
sum of money, which must be answer'd.
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