Page:Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749, vol. 2).pdf/51

 picked up at weddings and christenings, was possess'd of the only very remedy that could reduce this rebellious disorder; but watch'd, and overlook'd as I was, how to come at it, was the point, and that to all appearance, an invincible one: not that I did not rack my brains and invention how at once to elude my mother's vigilance, and procure myself the satisfaction of my impetuous curiosity, and longings for this mighty and untasted pleasure. At length, however, a singular chance did at once the work of a long course of alertness. One day that we had dined at an acquaintance's over the way, together with a gentlewoman lodger that occupied the first floor of our house, there started an indispensible necessity for my mother's going down to Greenwich to accompany her: the party was settled, when I do not know what genius wispered me to plead a head-ach that I certainly had not, against my being included in a jaunt that I had not the least relish for: the pretext however passed, and my mother, with much reluctance, Rh