The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be put to

nurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor but had been in

better circumstances, and who got a little livelihood by taking such as

I was supposed to be, and keeping them with all necessaries, till they

were at a certain age, in which it might be supposed they might go to

service or get their own bread.

This woman had also had a little school, which she kept to teach

children to read and to work; and having, as I have said, lived before

that in good fashion, she bred up the children she took with a great

deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.

But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very

religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house-wifely

and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in a

word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were

brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at the

dancing-school.

I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrified

with news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had

ordered that I should go to service. I was able to do but very little

service wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands and be a

drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me of often, which put me

into a great fright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service,

as they called it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young;

and I told my nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my

living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had

taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the chief

trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would

work for her, and I would work very hard.

I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I did

nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman so

much, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved me

very well.

One day after this, as she came into the room where all we poor

children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her

usual place as mistress, but as if she set herself on purpose to

observe me and see me work. I was doing something she had set me to;

as I remember, it was marking some shirts which she had taken to make,

and after a while she began to talk to me. 'Thou foolish child,' says

she, 'thou art always crying (for I was crying then); 'prithee, what

dost cry for?' 'Because they will take me away,' says I, 'and put me to

service, and I can't work housework.' 'Well, child,' says she, 'but

though you can't work housework, as you call it, you will learn it in

time, and they won't put you to hard things at first.' 'Yes, they

will,' says I, 'and if I can't do it they will beat me, and the maids

will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a little girl and I

can't do it'; and then I cried again, till I could not speak any more

to her.