The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

After he had thus baited his hook, and found easily enough the method

how to lay it in my way, he played an opener game; and one day, going

by his sister's chamber when I was there, doing something about

dressing her, he comes in with an air of gaiety. 'Oh, Mrs. Betty,'

said he to me, 'how do you do, Mrs. Betty? Don't your cheeks burn,

Mrs. Betty?' I made a curtsy and blushed, but said nothing. 'What

makes you talk so, brother?' says the lady. 'Why,' says he, 'we have

been talking of her below-stairs this half-hour.' 'Well,' says his

sister, 'you can say no harm of her, that I am sure, so 'tis no matter

what you have been talking about.' 'Nay,' says he, ''tis so far from

talking harm of her, that we have been talking a great deal of good,

and a great many fine things have been said of Mrs. Betty, I assure

you; and particularly, that she is the handsomest young woman in

Colchester; and, in short, they begin to toast her health in the town.' 'I wonder at you, brother,' says the sister. 'Betty wants but one

thing, but she had as good want everything, for the market is against

our sex just now; and if a young woman have beauty, birth, breeding,

wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all these to an extreme, yet if she

have not money, she's nobody, she had as good want them all for nothing

but money now recommends a woman; the men play the game all into their

own hands.' Her younger brother, who was by, cried, 'Hold, sister, you run too

fast; I am an exception to your rule. I assure you, if I find a woman

so accomplished as you talk of, I say, I assure you, I would not

trouble myself about the money.' 'Oh,' says the sister, 'but you will take care not to fancy one, then,

without the money.' 'You don't know that neither,' says the brother.

'But why, sister,' says the elder brother, 'why do you exclaim so at

the men for aiming so much at the fortune? You are none of them that

want a fortune, whatever else you want.' 'I understand you, brother,' replies the lady very smartly; 'you

suppose I have the money, and want the beauty; but as times go now, the

first will do without the last, so I have the better of my neighbours.' 'Well,' says the younger brother, 'but your neighbours, as you call

them, may be even with you, for beauty will steal a husband sometimes

in spite of money, and when the maid chances to be handsomer than the

mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a market, and rides in a coach

before her.' I thought it was time for me to withdraw and leave them, and I did so,

but not so far but that I heard all their discourse, in which I heard

abundance of the fine things said of myself, which served to prompt my

vanity, but, as I soon found, was not the way to increase my interest

in the family, for the sister and the younger brother fell grievously

out about it; and as he said some very disobliging things to her upon

my account, so I could easily see that she resented them by her future

conduct to me, which indeed was very unjust to me, for I had never had

the least thought of what she suspected as to her younger brother;

indeed, the elder brother, in his distant, remote way, had said a great

many things as in jest, which I had the folly to believe were in

earnest, or to flatter myself with the hopes of what I ought to have

supposed he never intended, and perhaps never thought of.