THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS
3
trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would work for her, and I would work very hard.
I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I did nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman so much, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved me very well.
One day after this, as she came into the room, where all the poor children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her usual place as mistress, but as if she had set herself on purpose to observe me and see me work. I was doing something she had set me to, as I remember it was marking some shirts, which she had taken to make, and after a while she began to talk to me. 'Thou foolish child', says she, 'thou art always crying' (for I was crying then). 'Prithee, what dost cry for?' 'Because they will take me away', says I, 'and put me to service, and I can't work house-work.' 'Well, child', says she, 'but though you can't work house-work, you will learn it in time, and they won't put you to hard things at first.' 'Yes, they will', says I; 'and if I can't do it they will beat me, and the maids will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a little girl, and I can't do it'; and then I cried again, till I could not speak any more.
This moved my good, motherly nurse, so that she resolved I should not go to service yet; so she bid me not cry, and she would speak to Mr Mayor, and I should not go to service till I was bigger.
Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to service at all was such a frightful thing to me, that if she had assured me I should not have gone till I was twenty years old, it would have been the same to me; I should have cried all the time, with the very apprehension of its being to be so at last.
When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be angry with me. 'And what would you have?' says she. 'Don't I tell you that you shall not go to service till you are bigger?' 'Ay', says I, 'but then I must go at last.' 'Why, what', said she, 'is the girl mad? What! Would you be a gentlewoman?' 'Yes', says I, and cried heartily till I roared out again.
This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be sure it would. 'Well, madam, forsooth', says she, gibing at me, 'you would be a gentlewoman; and how will you come to be a gentlewoman? What! will you do it by your fingers' ends?'
'Yes', says I again, very innocently.
'Why, what can you earn', says she; 'what can you get a day at your work?'
'Threepence', said I, 'when I spin, and fourpence when I work plain work.'
'Alas! poor gentlewoman', said she again, laughing, 'what will that do for thee?'
'It will keep me', says I, 'if you will let me live with you'; and this I said in such a poor, petitioning tone, that it made the poor woman's heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.
'But', says she, 'that will not keep you and buy you clothes too; and who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?' says she, and smiled all the while at me.
'I will work harder then', says I, 'and you shall have it all.'
'Poor child! it won't keep you', said she; 'it will hardly find you in victuals.'
