h of my being really and truly his mother.

My son then inquired where I was, and how I had disposed myself. I
told him I was on the Maryland side of the bay, at the plantation of a
particular friend who came from England in the same ship with me; that
as for that side of the bay where he was, I had no habitation. He told
me I should go home with him, and live with him, if I pleased, as long
as I lived; that as to his father, he knew nobody, and would never so
much as guess at me. I considered of that a little, and told him, that
though it was really no concern to me to live at a distance from him,
yet I could not say it would be the most comfortable thing in the world
to me to live in the house with him, and to have that unhappy object
always before me, which had been such a blow to my peace before; that
though I should be glad to have his company (my son), or to be as near
him as possible while I stayed, yet I could not think of being in the
house where I should be also under constant restraint for fear of
betraying myself in my discourse, nor should I be able to refrain some
expressions in my conversing with him as my son, that might discover
the whole affair, which would by no means be convenient.

He acknowledged that I was right in all this. 'But then, dear mother,'
says he, 'you shall be as near me as you can.' So he took me with him
on horseback to a plantation next to his own, and where I was as well
entertained as I could have been in his own. Having left me there he
went away home, telling me we would talk of the main business the next
day; and having first called me his aunt, and given a charge to the
people, who it seems were his tenants, to treat me with all possible
respect. About two hours after he was gone, he sent me a maid-servant
and a Negro boy to wait on me, and provisions ready dressed for my
supper; and thus I was as if I had been in a new world, and began
secretly now to wish that I had not brought my Lancashire husband from
England at all.

However, that wish was not hearty neither, for I loved my Lancashire
husband entirely, as indeed I had ever done from the beginning; and he
merited from me as much as it was possible for a man to do; but that by
the way.

The next morning my son came to visit me again almost as soon as I was
up. After a little discourse, he first of all pulled out a deerskin
bag, and gave it me, with five-and-fifty Spanish pistoles in it, and
told me that was to