Moll Flanders Read Free Page A

among them, you may be sure.
    However, not a week had passed over but on a sudden comes Mrs. Mayoress and her two daughters to the house to see my old nurse and to see her school and the children. When they had looked about them a little, “Well, Mrs. ——,” says the Mayoress to my nurse, “and pray which is the little lass that is to be a gentlewoman?” I heard her, and I was terrible frighted, though I did not know why neither; but Mrs. Mayoress comes up to me. “Well, miss,” says she, “and what are you at work upon?” The word “miss” was a language that had hardly been heard of in our school, and I wondered what sad name it was she called me; however, I stood up, made a curtsy, and she took my work out of my hand, looked on it, and said it was very well; then she looked upon one of my hands. “Nay, she may come to be a gentlewoman,” says she, “for aught I know; she has a lady’s hand, I assure you.” This pleased me mightily; but Mrs. Mayoress did not stop there, but put her hand in her pocket, gave me a shilling, and bid me mind my work and learn to work well, and I might be a gentlewoman for aught she knew.
    All this while my good old nurse, Mrs. Mayoress, and all the rest of them did not understand me at all, for they meant one sort of thing by the word “gentlewoman” and I meant quite another; for, alas, all I understood by being a gentlewoman was to be able to work for myself and get enough to keep me without going to service, whereas they meant to live great and high, and I know not what.
    Well, after Mrs. Mayoress was gone, her two daughters came in, and they called for the gentlewoman too and they talked a long while to me, and I answered them in my innocent way; but always if they asked me whether I resolved to be a gentlewoman, I answered, “Yes.” At last they asked me what a gentlewoman was. That puzzled me much. However, I explained myself negatively: that it was one that did not go to service to do house-work; they were mightily pleased and liked my little prattle to them, which, it seems, was agreeable enough to them, and they gave me money too.
    As for my money, I gave it all to my Mistress Nurse, as I called her, and told her she should have all I got when I was a gentlewoman as well as now. By this and some other of my talk, my old tutoress began to understand what I meant by being a gentlewoman, and that it was no more than to be able to get my bread by my own work; and at last she asked me whether it was not so.
    I told her yes and insisted on it, that to do so was to be a gentlewoman; “for,” says I, “there is such a one,” naming a woman that mended lace and washed the ladies’ laced heads; “she,” says I, “is a gentlewoman, and they call her madam.”
    “Poor child,” says my good old nurse, “you may soon be such a gentlewoman as that, for she is a person of ill fame and has had two bastards.”
    I did not understand anything of that, but I answered, “I am sure they call her madam, and she does not go to service nor do house-work”; and therefore I insisted that she was a gentlewoman, and I would be such a gentlewoman as that.
    The ladies were told all this again, and they made themselves merry with it, and every now and then Mr. Mayor’s daughters would come and see me and ask where the little gentlewoman was, which made me not a little proud of myself besides. I was often visited by these young ladies, and sometimes they brought others with them; so that I was known by it almost all over the town.
    I was now about ten years old and began to look a little womanish, for I was mighty grave, very mannerly, and as I had often heard the ladies say I was pretty and would be very handsome, you may be sure it made me not a little proud. However, that pride had no ill effect upon me yet; only, as they often gave me money, and I gave it my old nurse, she, honest woman, was so just as to lay it out again for me and gave me head-dresses and linen and gloves, and I