The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

After a full hearing, the alderman gave it as his opinion that his

neighbour was under a mistake, and that I was innocent, and the

goldsmith acquiesced in it too, and his wife, and so I was dismissed;

but as I was going to depart, Mr. Alderman said, 'But hold, madam, if

you were designing to buy spoons, I hope you will not let my friend

here lose his customer by the mistake.' I readily answered, 'No, sir,

I'll buy the spoons still, if he can match my odd spoon, which I

brought for a pattern'; and the goldsmith showed me some of the very

same fashion. So he weighed the spoons, and they came to

five-and-thirty shillings, so I pulls out my purse to pay him, in which

I had near twenty guineas, for I never went without such a sum about

me, whatever might happen, and I found it of use at other times as well

as now.

When Mr. Alderman saw my money, he said, 'Well, madam, now I am

satisfied you were wronged, and it was for this reason that I moved you

should buy the spoons, and stayed till you had bought them, for if you

had not had money to pay for them, I should have suspected that you did

not come into the shop with an intent to buy, for indeed the sort of

people who come upon these designs that you have been charged with, are

seldom troubled with much gold in their pockets, as I see you are.' I smiled, and told his worship, that then I owed something of his

favour to my money, but I hoped he saw reason also in the justice he

had done me before. He said, yes, he had, but this had confirmed his

opinion, and he was fully satisfied now of my having been injured. So

I came off with flying colours, though from an affair in which I was at

the very brink of destruction.

It was but three days after this, that not at all made cautious by my

former danger, as I used to be, and still pursuing the art which I had

so long been employed in, I ventured into a house where I saw the doors

open, and furnished myself, as I though verily without being perceived,

with two pieces of flowered silks, such as they call brocaded silk,

very rich. It was not a mercer's shop, nor a warehouse of a mercer,

but looked like a private dwelling-house, and was, it seems, inhabited

by a man that sold goods for the weavers to the mercers, like a broker

or factor.