The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

Since this care is needful to the life of children, to neglect them is

to murder them; again, to give them up to be managed by those people

who have none of that needful affection placed by nature in them, is to

neglect them in the highest degree; nay, in some it goes farther, and

is a neglect in order to their being lost; so that 'tis even an

intentional murder, whether the child lives or dies.

All those things represented themselves to my view, and that is the

blackest and most frightful form: and as I was very free with my

governess, whom I had now learned to call mother, I represented to her

all the dark thoughts which I had upon me about it, and told her what

distress I was in. She seemed graver by much at this part than at the

other; but as she was hardened in these things beyond all possibility

of being touched with the religious part, and the scruples about the

murder, so she was equally impenetrable in that part which related to

affection. She asked me if she had not been careful and tender to me

in my lying in, as if I had been her own child. I told her I owned she

had. 'Well, my dear,' says she, 'and when you are gone, what are you

to me? And what would it be to me if you were to be hanged? Do you

think there are not women who, as it is their trade and they get their

bread by it, value themselves upon their being as careful of children

as their own mothers can be, and understand it rather better? Yes,

yes, child,' says she, 'fear it not; how were we nursed ourselves? Are

you sure you was nursed up by your own mother? and yet you look fat and

fair, child,' says the old beldam; and with that she stroked me over

the face. 'Never be concerned, child,' says she, going on in her

drolling way; 'I have no murderers about me; I employ the best and the

honestest nurses that can be had, and have as few children miscarry

under their hands as there would if they were all nursed by mothers; we

want neither care nor skill.' She touched me to the quick when she asked if I was sure that I was

nursed by my own mother; on the contrary I was sure I was not; and I

trembled, and looked pale at the very expression. 'Sure,' said I to

myself, 'this creature cannot be a witch, or have any conversation with

a spirit, that can inform her what was done with me before I was able

to know it myself'; and I looked at her as if I had been frightened;

but reflecting that it could not be possible for her to know anything

about me, that disorder went off, and I began to be easy, but it was

not presently.