The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

I had several proposals made also to me about that time, to come into a

gang of house-breakers; but that was a thing I had no mind to venture

at neither, any more than I had at the coining trade. I offered to go

along with two men and a woman, that made it their business to get into

houses by stratagem, and with them I was willing enough to venture.

But there were three of them already, and they did not care to part,

nor I to have too many in a gang, so I did not close with them, but

declined them, and they paid dear for their next attempt.

But at length I met with a woman that had often told me what adventures

she had made, and with success, at the waterside, and I closed with

her, and we drove on our business pretty well. One day we came among

some Dutch people at St. Catherine's, where we went on pretence to buy

goods that were privately got on shore. I was two or three times in a

house where we saw a good quantity of prohibited goods, and my

companion once brought away three pieces of Dutch black silk that

turned to good account, and I had my share of it; but in all the

journeys I made by myself, I could not get an opportunity to do

anything, so I laid it aside, for I had been so often, that they began

to suspect something, and were so shy, that I saw nothing was to be

done.

This baulked me a little, and I resolved to push at something or other,

for I was not used to come back so often without purchase; so the next

day I dressed myself up fine, and took a walk to the other end of the

town. I passed through the Exchange in the Strand, but had no notion

of finding anything to do there, when on a sudden I saw a great

cluttering in the place, and all the people, shopkeepers as well as

others, standing up and staring; and what should it be but some great

duchess come into the Exchange, and they said the queen was coming. I

set myself close up to a shop-side with my back to the counter, as if

to let the crowd pass by, when keeping my eye upon a parcel of lace

which the shopkeeper was showing to some ladies that stood by me, the

shopkeeper and her maid were so taken up with looking to see who was

coming, and what shop they would go to, that I found means to slip a

paper of lace into my pocket and come clear off with it; so the

lady-milliner paid dear enough for her gaping after the queen.