yet you look fat and fair, child,’ says the old beldam; and with
that she stroked me over the face. ‘Never be concerned, child,’
says she, going on in her drolling way; ‘I have no murderers
about me; I employ the best and the honestest nurses that can
be had, and have as few children miscarry under their hands
as there would if they were all nursed by mothers; we want
neither care nor skill.’
She touched me to the quick when she asked if I was sure
that I was nursed by my own mother; on the contrary I was
sure I was not; and I trembled, and looked pale at the very
expression. ‘Sure,’ said I to myself, ‘this creature cannot be
a witch, or have any conversation with a spirit, that can inform
her what was done with me before I was able to know it myself’;
and I looked at her as if I had been frightened; but reflecting
that it could not be possible for her to know anything about
me, that disorder went off, and I began to be easy, but it was
not presently.
She perceived the disorder I was in, but did not know the
meaning of it; so she ran on in her wild talk upon the weakness
of my supposing that children were murdered because they
were not all nursed by the mother, and to persuade me that
the children she disposed of were as well used as if the mothers
had the nursing of them themselves.
‘It may be true, mother,’ says I, ‘for aught I know, but my
doubts are very strongly grounded indeed.’ ‘Come, then,’ says
she, ‘let’s hear some of them.’ ‘Why, first,’ says I, ‘you give
a piece of money to these people to take the child off the
parent’s hands, and to take care of it as long as it lives. Now
we know, mother,’ said I, ‘that those are poor people, and
their gain consists in being quit of the charge as soon as they
can; how can I doubt but that, as it is best for them to have
the child die, they are not over solicitous about life?’
‘This is all vapours and fancy,’ says the old woman; ‘I tell you
their credit depends upon the child’s life, and they are as careful
as any mother of you all.’
‘O mother,’ says I, ‘if I was but sure my little baby would be
carefully looked to, and have justice done it, I should be happy
indeed; but it is impossible I can be satisfied in that point
unless I saw it, and to see it would be ruin and destruction to
me, as now my case stands; so what to do I know not.’
‘A fine story!’ says the governess. ‘You would see the child,
and you would not see the child; you would be concealed and
discovered both together. These are things impossible, my
dear; so you must e’en do as other conscientious mothers have
done before you, and be contented with things as they must be,
though they are not as you wish them to be.’
I understood what she meant by conscientious mothers; she
would have said conscientious whores, but she was not willing
to disoblige me, for really in this case I was not a whore,
because legally married, the force of former marriage excepted.
However, let me be what I would, I was not come up to that
pitch of hardness common to the profession; I mean, to be
unnatural, and regardless of the safety of my child; and I
preserved this honest affection so long, that I was upon the
point of giving up my friend at the bank, who lay so hard at
me to come to him and marry him, that, in short, there was
hardly any room to deny him.
At last my old governess came to me, with her usual assurance.
‘Come, my dear,’ says she, ‘I have found out a way how you
shall be at a certainty that your child shall be used well, and
yet the people that take care of it shall never know you, or
who the mother of the child is.’