The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

I now began to think this necessary woman might help me a little in my

low condition to some business, for I would gladly have turned my hand

to any honest employment if I could have got it. But here she was

deficient; honest business did not come within her reach. If I had

been younger, perhaps she might have helped me to a spark, but my

thoughts were off that kind of livelihood, as being quite out of the

way after fifty, which was my case, and so I told her.

She invited me at last to come, and be at her house till I could find

something to do, and it should cost me very little, and this I gladly

accepted of. And now living a little easier, I entered into some

measures to have my little son by my last husband taken off; and this

she made easy too, reserving a payment only of #5 a year, if I could

pay it. This was such a help to me, that for a good while I left off

the wicked trade that I had so newly taken up; and gladly I would have

got my bread by the help of my needle if I could have got work, but

that was very hard to do for one that had no manner of acquaintance in

the world.

However, at last I got some quilting work for ladies' beds, petticoats,

and the like; and this I liked very well, and worked very hard, and

with this I began to live; but the diligent devil, who resolved I

should continue in his service, continually prompted me to go out and

take a walk, that is to say, to see if anything would offer in the old

way.

One evening I blindly obeyed his summons, and fetched a long circuit

through the streets, but met with no purchase, and came home very weary

and empty; but not content with that, I went out the next evening too,

when going by an alehouse I saw the door of a little room open, next

the very street, and on the table a silver tankard, things much in use

in public-houses at that time. It seems some company had been drinking

there, and the careless boys had forgot to take it away.

I went into the box frankly, and setting the silver tankard on the

corner of the bench, I sat down before it, and knocked with my foot; a

boy came presently, and I bade him fetch me a pint of warm ale, for it

was cold weather; the boy ran, and I heard him go down the cellar to

draw the ale. While the boy was gone, another boy came into the room,

and cried, 'D' ye call?' I spoke with a melancholy air, and said, 'No,

child; the boy is gone for a pint of ale for me.' While I sat here, I heard the woman in the bar say, 'Are they all gone

in the five?' which was the box I sat in, and the boy said, 'Yes.' 'Who

fetched the tankard away?' says the woman. 'I did,' says another boy;

'that's it,' pointing, it seems, to another tankard, which he had

fetched from another box by mistake; or else it must be, that the rogue

forgot that he had not brought it in, which certainly he had not.