Moggy blushed again, and said she must go home first, that she could not be ready before to-morrow. “Look ye, Moggy,” says I, “you are my wife now, and you shall never go away from me a maid. I know what you mean; you would go home to shift you. Come, Moggy,” says I, “come along with me again upstairs.” So I carried her to a chest of linen, where were several new shifts of my last wife’s, which she had never worn at all, and some that had been worn.
“There is a clean smock for you, Moggy,” says I, “and to-morrow you shall have all the rest.” When I had done this, “Now, Moggy,” says I, “go and dress you;” so I locked her in, and went downstairs. “Knock,” says I, “when you are dressed.”
After some time Moggy did not knock, but down she came into my room, completely dressed, for there were several other things that I bade her take, and the clothes fitted her as if they had been made for her. It seems she slipped the lock back.
“Well, Moggy,” says I, “now you see you shan’t be married in your old clothes;” so I took her in my arms and kissed her; and well pleased I was as ever I was in my life, or with anything I ever did in my life. As soon as it was dark Moggy slipped away beforehand, as the doctor and I had agreed, to the old gentleman’s housekeeper, and I came in about half-an-hour after; and there we were married in the doctor’s study—that is to say, in his oratory or chapel, a little room within his study—and we stayed and supped with him afterwards.
Then, after a short stay more, I went home first, because I would send the children all to bed, and the other servants out of the way; and Moggy came some time after, and so we lay together that night. The next morning I let all the family know that Moggy was my wife, and my three children were rejoiced at it to the last degree. And now I was a married man a fourth time; and, in short, I was really more happy in this plain country girl than with any of all the wives I had had. She was not young, being about thirty-three, but she brought me a son the first year. She was very pretty, well-shaped, and of a merry, cheerful disposition, but not a beauty. She was an admirable family manager, loved my former children, and used them not at all the worse for having some of her own. In a word, she made me an excellent wife, but lived with me but four years, and died of a hurt she got of a fall while she was with child, and in her I had a very great loss indeed.
And yet such was my fate in wives, that, after all the blushing and backwardness of Mrs. Moggy at first, Mrs. Moggy had, it seems, made a slip in her younger days, and was got with child ten years before, by a gentleman of a great estate in that country, who promised her marriage, and afterwards deserted her. But as that had happened long before I came into the country, and the child was dead and forgotten, the people were so good to her, and so kind to me, that, hearing I had married her, nobody ever spoke of it; neither did I ever hear of it or suspect it till after she was in her grave, and then it was of small consequence to me one way or other; and she was a faithful, virtuous, obliging wife to me. I had very severe affliction indeed while she lived with me; for the smallpox, a frightful distemper in that country, broke into my family, and carried off three of my children and a maid-servant; so that I had only one of my former wife’s, and one by my Moggy, the first a son, the last a daughter.
While these things were in agitation came on the invasion of the Scots and the fight at Preston; and I have cause to bless the memory of my Moggy; for I was all on fire on that side, and just going away with horse and arms to join the Lord Derwentwater. But Moggy begged me off (as I may call it), and hung about me so with her tears and importunities that I sat still and looked on; for which I had reason to be thankful.
I was really a sorrowful father, and the loss of my children stuck close to me; but the loss of my wife stuck closer to me than all the rest. Nor was my grief lessened or my kindest thoughts abated in the least by the account I heard of her former miscarriages, seeing they were so long before I knew her, and were not discovered by me or to me in her lifetime.
All these things put together made me very comfortless. And now I thought Heaven summoned me to retire to Virginia, the place, and, as I may say, the only place, I had been blessed at, or had met with anything that deserved the name of success in, and where, indeed, my affairs being in good hands, the plantations were increased to such a degree that some years my return here made up eight hundred pounds, and one year almost a thousand. So I resolved to leave my native country once more, and taking my son with me, and leaving Moggy’s daughter with her grandfather, I made him my principal agent, left him considerable in his hands for the maintenance of the child, and left my will in his hand, by which, if I died before I should otherwise provide for her, I left her £2000 portion, to be paid by my son out of the estate I had in Virginia, and the whole estate, if he died unmarried.
I embarked for Virginia in the year ——, at the town of Liverpool, and had a tolerable voyage thither, only that we met with a pirate ship, in the latitude of 48 degrees, who plundered us of every thing they could come at that was for their turn; that is to say, provisions, ammunition, small-arms, and money. But, to give the rogues their due, though they were the most abandoned wretches that were ever seen, they did not use us ill. And as to my loss, it was not considerable; the cargo which I had on board was in goods, and was of no use to them; nor could they come at those things without rummaging the whole ship, which they did not think worth their while.