The Usurer Pays Miss Jenny Five Guineas
At breakfast, Miss Jenny and the usurer Isaac are discovered missing from the company. Mrs. Weazel explains that Miss Jenny spent the night groaning and rose too ill to continue her journey. A message arrives summoning the waggoner to Miss Jenny’s chamber, where she lamentably claims she fears a miscarriage caused by last night’s fright from Isaac’s brutality. The ancient usurer is found hiding in the waggon and dragged before her. Miss Jenny threatens to involve a justice unless paid for the potential consequences. Isaac protests his innocence, explaining his presence in her bed resulted from her own invitation, but Miss Jenny demands one hundred guineas for a release. When Isaac protests his poverty, she reveals she knows him as Isaac Rapine, a money-broker in the Minories. After extensive negotiation, she finally accepts five guineas, which he pays reluctantly rather than face prosecution for rape. Immediately recovered, Miss Jenny joins the waggon, and the company travels peacefully with Strap riding Joey’s horse while the driver walks.
In Danger of Losing a Meal
On the sixth day, the passengers prepare for dinner when the innkeeper informs them that three newly arrived gentlemen have claimed the reserved victuals, declaring the waggon passengers might be damned and suggesting they dine on bread and cheese. The company convenes to remedy this disappointment, and Miss Jenny proposes that Captain Weazel, as a professional soldier, should protect them from insult. To the amazement of all, the captain refuses, swearing he would not be known to have traveled in a waggon for all the world, and claims he would sooner eat his sword than his provisions if he could appear with honor. Miss Jenny immediately snatches his weapon, runs to the kitchen, and threatens the cook with death unless the meals are served. The commotion brings the three strangers downstairs, where one recognizes Miss Jenny as “Jenny Ramper” and she reciprocates by embracing him as “Jack Rattle,” declaring she will dine with them instead. The waggon passengers face an uncomfortable meal until Joey enters the kitchen wielding a pitchfork and swearing to defend their provisions, causing the confrontation to escalate with drawn swords on both sides until the landlord intervenes by offering his own dinner to the strangers, which pacifies everyone.
An Account of Captain Weazel and His Lady
During the morning and afternoon, Captain Weazel entertains the company with accounts of his supposed valor, including knocking down a soldier who mocked him, tweaking a drawer’s nose for criticizing his use of a fork, and challenging a cheesemonger rival. Mrs. Weazel confirms all his stories, adding a tale about receiving a love letter from Squire Gobble and falling ill from eating ortolans while her lord noticed her altered complexion. The captain recounts how he made a witty repartee about Lord Diddle’s remark that Mrs. Weazel was breeding. Walking with Joey in the afternoon, the narrator learns from the driver that Miss Jenny is a common prostitute who fell in with a recruiting officer, was abandoned in Newcastle when he was arrested for debt, and now travels by waggon. Joey further reveals that one of the strangers’ servants recognized Captain Weazel as having served Lord Frizzle as valet-de-chambre until his lady insisted both Weazel and his mistress be dismissed. To reconcile them gracefully, his lordship arranged for Weazel to marry his mistress and secured him an ensign’s commission in the army. Recognizing they share the same low opinion of the captain’s courage, Joey proposes testing it with a fake highwayman alarm.
The Captain’s Courage Tried
As dusk falls, Joey alerts the waggon to the approaching horseman he suspects might be a highwayman. A general consternation erupts: Strap leaps from the waggon and hides behind a hedge, the usurer rustles suspiciously in the straw, Mrs. Weazel wrings her hands with lamentation, and the captain astonishingly begins to snore. Miss Jenny shakes him awake, calling him a coward and ordering him to behave like a soldier. Weazel pretends anger at being disturbed and swears he will have his nap regardless of highwaymen, though he trembles so violently the carriage shakes. Enraged at his cowardice, Miss Jenny leaps out to defend them herself. The horseman, actually a friend of Joey’s in on the scheme, approaches and demands to know who is inside. Isaac pleas for mercy, Mrs. Weazel claims to be a sorrowful wife, and when asked about her husband, she explains he was left sick at the last inn. The stranger then claims to smell a befouled lapdog and seizes Weazel’s leg, dragging him from under his wife’s petticoats where he had hidden. The exposed captain rubs his eyes, pretends to wake from sleep, and the stranger departs with mocking farewell.
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