This
hint was sufficient to give Tom his cue, and I was doomed to be pestered
for the remainder of the day with questions and raillery on my progress
in the court of Love. On our quitting the old gypsy woman, a pair of
buxom damsels came in sight, advancing from the Abingdon road; they
were no doubt like ourselves, I thought, come to consult the oracle of
Bagley, or, perhaps, were the daughters of some respectable farmer
who owned the adjoining land. All these doubts were, however, of short
duration; for Tom Echo no sooner caught sight of their faces, than away
he bounded towards them like a young colt in all the frolic of untamed
playfulness, and before I could reach him, one of the ladies was rolling
on the green carpet of luxuriant Nature. In the deep bosom of Bagley
Wood, impervious to the eye of authority, many a sportive scene occurs
which would alarm the ethics of the solemn sages of the cloistered
college. They were, I discovered, sisters, too early abandoned by
an unfeeling parent to poverty, and thus became an easy prey to the
licentious and the giddy, who, in the pursuit of pleasure, never
contemplate the attendant misery which is sure to follow the victim
of seduction. There was something romantic in their story: they were
daughters of the celebrated Mother Goose, whose person must have been
familiar to every Oxonian for the last sixty years prior to her decease,
which occurred but a short time since Of ~162~~ this woman's history
I have since gleaned some curious particulars, the most remarkable of
which (contained in the annexed note) have been authenticated by living
witnesses.
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