Daniel Defoe

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe

One day after this, as she came into the room where all we poor children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her usual place as mistress, but as if she 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 housework." "Well, child," says she, "but though you can't work housework, as you call it, 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 to her.