THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS
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bound thither; and there we intended to have settled at first, though afterwards we altered our minds.
The first thing I did of moment after having gotten all our goods on shore, and placed them in a storehouse, which, with a lodging, we hired at the small place or village where we landed; I say, the first thing was to inquire after my mother, and after my brother (that fatal person whom I married as a husband, as I have related at large). A little inquiry furnished me with information that Mrs , that is my mother, was dead; that my brother, or husband, was alive, and, which was worse, I found he was removed from the plantation where I lived, and lived with one of his sons in a plantation just by the place where we landed, and had hired a warehouse.
I was a little surprised at first, but as I ventured to satisfy myself that he could not know me, I was not only perfectly easy, but had a great mind to see him, if it was possible, without his seeing me. In order to do that, I found out by inquiry the plantation where he lived, and with a woman of the place whom I got to help me, like what we call a charwoman, I rambled about towards the place as if I had only a mind to see the country and look about me. At last I came so near that I saw the dwelling-house. I asked the woman whose plantation that was; she said it belonged to such a man, and looking out a little to our right hands, 'There', says she, 'is the gentleman that owns the plantatation, and his father with him.' 'What are their Christian names?' said I. 'I know not', said she, 'what the old gentleman's name is, but his son's name is Humphry; and I believe', says she, 'the father's is so too.' You may guess, if you can, what a confused mixture of joy and fright possessed my thoughts upon this occasion, for I immediately knew that this was nobody else but my own son, by that father she showed me, who was my own brother. I had no mask, but I ruffled my hoods so about my face that I depended upon it that after above twenty years' absence, and withal not expecting anything of me in that part of the world, he would not be able to know me. But I need not have used all that caution, for he was grown dim-sighted by some distemper which had fallen upon his eyes, and could but just see well enough to walk about, and not run against a tree or into a ditch. As they drew near to us I said, 'Does he know you, Mrs Owen?' (so they called the woman,) 'Yes', she said, 'if he hears me speak, he will know me; but he can't see well enough to know me or anybody else'; and so she told me the story of his sight, as I have related. This made me secure, and so I threw open my hoods again, and let them pass by me. It was a wretched thing for a mother thus to see her own son, a handsome, comely young gentleman in flourishing circumstances, and durst not make herself known to him, and durst not take any notice of him. Let any mother of children that reads this consider it, and but think with what anguish of mind I restrained myself; what yearnings of soul I had in me to embrace him, and weep over him; and how I thought all my entrails turned within me, that my very bowels moved, and I knew not what to do, as I now know not how to express those agonies! When he went from me I stood gazing and trembling, and looking after him as long as I could see him; then sitting down on the grass, just at a place I had marked, I made as if I lay down to rest me, but turned from her, and lying on my face wept, and kissed the ground that he had set his foot on.
