The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

He took me at my word immediately, and after that there was no

resisting him; neither indeed had I any mind to resist him any more,

let what would come of it.

Thus the government of our virtue was broken, and I exchanged the place

of friend for that unmusical, harsh-sounding title of whore. In the

morning we were both at our penitentials; I cried very heartily, he

expressed himself very sorry; but that was all either of us could do at

that time, and the way being thus cleared, and the bars of virtue and

conscience thus removed, we had the less difficult afterwards to

struggle with.

It was but a dull kind of conversation that we had together for all the

rest of that week; I looked on him with blushes, and every now and then

started that melancholy objection, 'What if I should be with child now?

What will become of me then?' He encouraged me by telling me, that as

long as I was true to him, he would be so to me; and since it was gone

such a length (which indeed he never intended), yet if I was with

child, he would take care of that, and of me too. This hardened us

both. I assured him if I was with child, I would die for want of a

midwife rather than name him as the father of it; and he assured me I

should never want if I should be with child. These mutual assurances

hardened us in the thing, and after this we repeated the crime as often

as we pleased, till at length, as I had feared, so it came to pass, and

I was indeed with child.

After I was sure it was so, and I had satisfied him of it too, we began

to think of taking measures for the managing it, and I proposed

trusting the secret to my landlady, and asking her advice, which he

agreed to. My landlady, a woman (as I found) used to such things, made

light of it; she said she knew it would come to that at last, and made

us very merry about it. As I said above, we found her an experienced

old lady at such work; she undertook everything, engaged to procure a

midwife and a nurse, to satisfy all inquiries, and bring us off with

reputation, and she did so very dexterously indeed.

When I grew near my time she desired my gentleman to go away to London,

or make as if he did so. When he was gone, she acquainted the parish

officers that there was a lady ready to lie in at her house, but that

she knew her husband very well, and gave them, as she pretended, an

account of his name, which she called Sir Walter Cleve; telling them he

was a very worthy gentleman, and that she would answer for all

inquiries, and the like. This satisfied the parish officers presently,

and I lay in with as much credit as I could have done if I had really

been my Lady Cleve, and was assisted in my travail by three or four of

the best citizens' wives of Bath who lived in the neighbourhood, which,

however, made me a little the more expensive to him. I often expressed

my concern to him about it, but he bid me not be concerned at it.