THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS
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after, and happened to be there just when my cargo from England came in, which I let him believe belonged all to my husband's estate, and not to me.
It must be observed that when the old wretch, my brother (husband) was dead, I then freely gave my husband an account of all that affair, and of this cousin, as I called him before, being my own son by that mistaken match. He was perfectly easy in the account, and told me he should have been easy if the old man, as we called him, had been alive. 'For', said he, 'it was no fault of yours, nor of his; it was a mistake impossible to be prevented.' He only reproached him with desiring me to conceal it, and to live with him as a wife, after I knew that he was my brother; that, he said, was a vile part. Thus all these little difficulties were made easy, and we lived together with the greatest kindness and comfort imaginable. We are now grown old; I am come back to England, being almost, seventy years of age, my husband sixty-eight, having performed much more than the limited terms of my transportation; and now, notwithstanding all the fatigues and all the miseries we have both gone through, we are both in good heart and health. My husband remained there some time after me to settle our affairs, and at first I had intended to go back to him, but at his desire I altered that resolution, and he is come over to England also, where we resolve to spend the remainder of our years in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived.
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1683
