The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

I had no policy in all this; you may easily see it was all nature; but

it was joined with so much innocence and so much passion that, in

short, it set the good motherly creature a-weeping too, and she cried

at last as fast as I did, and then took me and led me out of the

teaching-room. 'Come,' says she, 'you shan't go to service; you shall

live with me'; and this pacified me for the present.

Some time after this, she going to wait on the Mayor, and talking of

such things as belonged to her business, at last my story came up, and

my good nurse told Mr. Mayor the whole tale. He was so pleased with

it, that he would call his lady and his two daughters to hear it, and

it made mirth enough among them, you may be sure.

However, not a week had passed over, but on a sudden comes Mrs.

Mayoress and her two daughters to the house to see my old nurse, and to

see her school and the children. When they had looked about them a

little, 'Well, Mrs. ----,' says the Mayoress to my nurse, 'and pray

which is the little lass that intends to be a gentlewoman?' I heard

her, and I was terribly frighted at first, though I did not know why

neither; but Mrs. Mayoress comes up to me. 'Well, miss,' says she,

'and what are you at work upon?' The word miss was a language that had

hardly been heard of in our school, and I wondered what sad name it was

she called me. However, I stood up, made a curtsy, and she took my

work out of my hand, looked on it, and said it was very well; then she

took up one of the hands. 'Nay,' says she, 'the child may come to be a

gentlewoman for aught anybody knows; she has a gentlewoman's hand,'

says she. This pleased me mightily, you may be sure; but Mrs. Mayoress

did not stop there, but giving me my work again, she put her hand in

her pocket, gave me a shilling, and bid me mind my work, and learn to

work well, and I might be a gentlewoman for aught she knew.

Now all this while my good old nurse, Mrs. Mayoress, and all the rest

of them did not understand me at all, for they meant one sort of thing

by the word gentlewoman, and I meant quite another; for alas! all I

understood by being a gentlewoman was to be able to work for myself,

and get enough to keep me without that terrible bugbear going to

service, whereas they meant to live great, rich and high, and I know

not what.