Much as he had suffered by this ungrateful woman, he took the first opportunity to go to a coffee-house within a door or two of her mistress, in order to learn what had become of her.  There was but one person who had been trusted with his ever having visited her at all, and they too, were ignorant that she had ever run away with him.  Philip therefore sent for his confidant, from whom he received information, that after snivelling and crying for a hour or two, she took advantage of being left alone in a parlour (although the door was locked), and getting out at the window into the backyard, made a shift to scramble over the top of the house of office into the court, and so made her escape to the waterside, where her mistress found she had taken a pair of oars.  But though they followed her to Falcon Stairs, yet they were not able to retrieve her.  Philip at this news was exceedingly grieved, and returned home again very disconsolate on this occasion.

Alice, in the meantime, lurked about in St. George’s Fields till evening, and then crossing the bridge, walked on towards St. James’s.  However dirty and despicable her dress, yet as she had a very pretty face and a very engaging manner of speaking at first sight, she drew in a merchant’s book-keeper, as she walked down Cornhill, to carry her to a certain tavern at the corner of Bishopsgate Street; where, after a good supper and a bottle or two of wine, she engaged him to take her to a lodging, and by degrees to give her a great deal of fine clothes, in return for which she flattered him so greatly that he grew as fond of her and as much a fool as ever Philip had been.

In the meantime her sister, who was much of her disposition, had been turned off by a young fellow she had run away with from Oxford, and in a miserable condition had trotted up to town, in order to see whether she could have better luck with another gallant.  One night, as she was strolling through Leadenhall Street in her vocation, she saw her sister Alice and the book-keeper who kept her, walking home with a servant, and a candle and lanthorn before them.  Jenny did not think fit to speak to them, but dogging them privately home, called upon her sister the next day and was mighty well received.  The couple now took every opportunity (notwithstanding the allowance of the book-keeper) to enable Alice to stroll out with her together, and wandered about nightly in quest of adventures, till it began to grow towards ten o’clock, and the fear of a visit from her keeper drove Alice to her lodgings.

This trade, without any remarkable accident, was practised for about three months, when on a sudden the book-keeper vanished, and for three weeks’ time Alice heard not a word of him.  This threw both the sisters into a heavy peck of troubles, and the more because he had always kept it a secret in whose family he lived and went to the people where Alice lodged by another name than his own.  However they got money enough by sparks they picked up to live pretty easily together, and that no misfortune might go too near their hearts, they fell to drinking a quart of brandy a day.  It seems the woman at whose house they lodged was herself given to drinking, and so by treating her they fell into the same vice.  The landlady in return was mighty civil to them, and every now and then invited them downstairs to drink with her.