THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS
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go home with me to my lodging, though I would not ask him to go in, for I told him it was not decent.
In short, I ventured to avoid signing a contract, and the reason why I did it was because the lady that had invited me to go with her into Lancashire insisted so positively upon it, and promised me such great fortunes and fine things there, that I was tempted to go and try. 'Perhaps', said I, 'I may mend myself very much'; and then I made no scruple of quiting my honest citizen, whom I was not so much in love with as not to leave him for a richer.
In a word, I avoided a contract; but told him I would go into the north, that he would know where to write to me by the business I had intrusted him with; that I would give him a sufficient pledge of my respect for him, for I would leave almost all I had in the world in his hands; and I would thus far give him my word, that as soon as he had sued out the divorce, if he would send me an account of it, I would come up to London, and that then we would talk seriously of the matter.
It was a base design I went with, that I must confess, though I was invited thither with a design much worse, as the sequel will discover. Well, I went with my friend, as I called her, into Lancashire. All the way we went she caressed me with the utmost appearance of a sincere, unassembled affection; treated me, except my coach-hire, all the way; and her brother brought a gentleman's coach to Warrington to receive us, and we were carried from thence to Liverpool with as much ceremony as I could desire.
We were also entertained at a merchant's house in Liverpool three or four days very handsomely; I forbear to tell his name, because of what followed. Then she told me she would carry me to an uncle's house of hers where we should be nobly entertained; and her uncle, as she called him, sent a coach and four horses for us, and we were carried near forty miles I know not whither.
We came, however, to a gentleman's seat, where was a numerous family, a large park, extraordinary company indeed, and where she was called cousin. I told her, if she had resolved to bring me into such company as this, she should have let me have furnished myself with better clothes. The ladies took notice of that, and told me very genteelly they did not value people in their own country so much by their clothes as they did in London; that their cousin had fully informed them of my quality, and that I did not want clothes to set me off; in short, they entertained me not like what I was, but like what they thought I had been, namely, a widow lady of a great fortune.
The first discovery I made here was, that the family were all Roman Catholics, and the cousin too; however nobody in the world could behave better to me, and I had all the civility shown that I could have had if I had been of their opinion. The truth is, I had not so much principle of any kind as to be nice in point of religion; and I presently learned to speak favourably of the Romish Church; particularly, I told them I saw little but the prejudice of education in all the differences that were among Christians about religion, and if it had so happened that my father had been a Roman Catholic, I doubted not but I should have been as well pleased with their religion as my own.
This obliged them in the highest degree, and as I was besieged day and night with good company and pleasant discourse, so I had two or
