The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

Our affair was in a very good posture; we purchased of the proprietors

of the colony as much land for #35, paid in ready money, as would make

a sufficient plantation to employ between fifty and sixty servants, and

which, being well improved, would be sufficient to us as long as we

could either of us live; and as for children, I was past the prospect

of anything of that kind.

But out good fortune did not end here. I went, as I have said, over

the bay, to the place where my brother, once a husband, lived; but I

did not go to the same village where I was before, but went up another

great river, on the east side of the river Potomac, called Rappahannock

River, and by this means came on the back of his plantation, which was

large, and by the help of a navigable creek, or little river, that ran

into the Rappahannock, I came very near it.

I was now fully resolved to go up point-blank to my brother (husband),

and to tell him who I was; but not knowing what temper I might find him

in, or how much out of temper rather, I might make him by such a rash

visit, I resolved to write a letter to him first, to let him know who I

was, and that I was come not to give him any trouble upon the old

relation, which I hoped was entirely forgot, but that I applied to him

as a sister to a brother, desiring his assistance in the case of that

provision which our mother, at her decease, had left for my support,

and which I did not doubt but he would do me justice in, especially

considering that I was come thus far to look after it.

I said some very tender, kind things in the letter about his son, which

I told him he knew to be my own child, and that as I was guilty of

nothing in marrying him, any more than he was in marrying me, neither

of us having then known our being at all related to one another, so I

hoped he would allow me the most passionate desire of once seeing my

one and only child, and of showing something of the infirmities of a

mother in preserving a violent affect for him, who had never been able

to retain any thought of me one way or other.

I did believe that, having received this letter, he would immediately

give it to his son to read, I having understood his eyes being so dim,

that he could not see to read it; but it fell out better than so, for

as his sight was dim, so he had allowed his son to open all letters

that came to his hand for him, and the old gentleman being from home,

or out of the way when my messenger came, my letter came directly to my

son's hand, and he opened and read it.