The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

I now grew big, and the people where I lodged perceived it, and began

to take notice of it to me, and, as far as civility would allow,

intimated that I must think of removing. This put me to extreme

perplexity, and I grew very melancholy, for indeed I knew not what

course to take. I had money, but no friends, and was like to have a

child upon my hands to keep, which was a difficulty I had never had

upon me yet, as the particulars of my story hitherto make appear.

In the course of this affair I fell very ill, and my melancholy really

increased my distemper; my illness proved at length to be only an ague,

but my apprehensions were really that I should miscarry. I should not

say apprehensions, for indeed I would have been glad to miscarry, but I

could never be brought to entertain so much as a thought of

endeavouring to miscarry, or of taking any thing to make me miscarry; I

abhorred, I say, so much as the thought of it.

However, speaking of it in the house, the gentlewoman who kept the

house proposed to me to send for a midwife. I scrupled it at first,

but after some time consented to it, but told her I had no particular

acquaintance with any midwife, and so left it to her.

It seems the mistress of the house was not so great a stranger to such

cases as mine was as I thought at first she had been, as will appear

presently, and she sent for a midwife of the right sort--that is to

say, the right sort for me.

The woman appeared to be an experienced woman in her business, I mean

as a midwife; but she had another calling too, in which she was as

expert as most women if not more. My landlady had told her I was very

melancholy, and that she believed that had done me harm; and once,

before me, said to her, 'Mrs. B----' (meaning the midwife), 'I believe

this lady's trouble is of a kind that is pretty much in your way, and

therefore if you can do anything for her, pray do, for she is a very

civil gentlewoman'; and so she went out of the room.

I really did not understand her, but my Mother Midnight began very

seriously to explain what she mean, as soon as she was gone. 'Madam,'

says she, 'you seem not to understand what your landlady means; and

when you do understand it, you need not let her know at all that you do

so.