The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders - Page 12/256

About the time that I was fourteen years and a quarter old, my good

nurse, mother I rather to call her, fell sick and died. I was then in

a sad condition indeed, for as there is no great bustle in putting an

end to a poor body's family when once they are carried to the grave, so

the poor good woman being buried, the parish children she kept were

immediately removed by the church-wardens; the school was at an end,

and the children of it had no more to do but just stay at home till

they were sent somewhere else; and as for what she left, her daughter,

a married woman with six or seven children, came and swept it all away

at once, and removing the goods, they had no more to say to me than to

jest with me, and tell me that the little gentlewoman might set up for

herself if she pleased.

I was frighted out of my wits almost, and knew not what to do, for I

was, as it were, turned out of doors to the wide world, and that which

was still worse, the old honest woman had two-and-twenty shillings of

mine in her hand, which was all the estate the little gentlewoman had

in the world; and when I asked the daughter for it, she huffed me and

laughed at me, and told me she had nothing to do with it.

It was true the good, poor woman had told her daughter of it, and that

it lay in such a place, that it was the child's money, and had called

once or twice for me to give it me, but I was, unhappily, out of the

way somewhere or other, and when I came back she was past being in a

condition to speak of it. However, the daughter was so honest

afterwards as to give it me, though at first she used me cruelly about

it.

Now was I a poor gentlewoman indeed, and I was just that very night to

be turned into the wide world; for the daughter removed all the goods,

and I had not so much as a lodging to go to, or a bit of bread to eat.

But it seems some of the neighbours, who had known my circumstances,

took so much compassion of me as to acquaint the lady in whose family I

had been a week, as I mentioned above; and immediately she sent her

maid to fetch me away, and two of her daughters came with the maid

though unsent. So I went with them, bag and baggage, and with a glad

heart, you may be sure. The fright of my condition had made such an

impression upon me, that I did not want now to be a gentlewoman, but

was very willing to be a servant, and that any kind of servant they

thought fit to have me be.