The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

He called the messenger in, after some little stay, and asked him where

the person was who gave him the letter. The messenger told him the

place, which was about seven miles off, so he bid him stay, and

ordering a horse to be got ready, and two servants, away he came to me

with the messenger. Let any one judge the consternation I was in when

my messenger came back, and told me the old gentleman was not at home,

but his son was come along with him, and was just coming up to me. I

was perfectly confounded, for I knew not whether it was peace or war,

nor could I tell how to behave; however, I had but a very few moments

to think, for my son was at the heels of the messenger, and coming up

into my lodgings, asked the fellow at the door something. I suppose it

was, for I did not hear it so as to understand it, which was the

gentlewoman that sent him; for the messenger said, 'There she is, sir';

at which he comes directly up to me, kisses me, took me in his arms,

and embraced me with so much passion that he could not speak, but I

could feel his breast heave and throb like a child, that cries, but

sobs, and cannot cry it out.

I can neither express nor describe the joy that touched my very soul

when I found, for it was easy to discover that part, that he came not

as a stranger, but as a son to a mother, and indeed as a son who had

never before known what a mother of his own was; in short, we cried

over one another a considerable while, when at last he broke out first.

'My dear mother,' says he, 'are you still alive? I never expected to

have seen your face.' As for me, I could say nothing a great while.

After we had both recovered ourselves a little, and were able to talk,

he told me how things stood. As to what I had written to his father, he

told me he had not showed my letter to his father, or told him anything

about it; that what his grandmother left me was in his hands, and that

he would do me justice to my full satisfaction; that as to his father,

he was old and infirm both in body and mind; that he was very fretful

and passionate, almost blind, and capable of nothing; and he questioned

whether he would know how to act in an affair which was of so nice a

nature as this; and that therefore he had come himself, as well to

satisfy himself in seeing me, which he could not restrain himself from,

as also to put it into my power to make a judgment, after I had seen

how things were, whether I would discover myself to his father or no.