Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/375

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

[ 361 ]

Cast-off Girls. But he found the old Lady inflexible; she had taken Things so ill that she could not go back; she would forgive them, she said, and pray for them, but she would never give her Estate to them; that she said she was not bound to do upon any Account whatever. In a word, the good Man found there was no room to say any thing farther upon that Subject, unless he would utterly disoblige her, which it was not his Business to do; so he meddled no more with it.

After some time, the old Lady tells her Tenant, she wanted to speak with him, and his Wife and Daughter together; the Daughter was, it seems, a young married Woman, but a sober, grave and religious Body, like her Father; and also of a Judgment above her Years; and this, it seems, made the old Lady take her into the Council; the Tenant had also a Son, but he was but a little Boy of about nine or ten Years old.

At this Meeting the old Lady tells them, that as she was now in Years, and could not expect to live much longer, she thought it was time to settle her Affairs in the World, and to dispose of what Estate she had to leave behind her; that they all know how she had been treated by those to whom she had been so kind, and to whom she had purposed to be still so much kinder; That they likewise knew what her Resolutions were with respect to that; that at his Importunity however, she had so far forgiven them, as to resolve to give each of them a Legacy of One hundred Pounds to help to support them, and to testify her Charity, notwithstanding the ill Usage theyhad