up the doors, and
be gone; that the people should be told, that if they did not think fit
to take some care of the children, they might send for the churchwardens
if they thought that better, for that they were born in that parish, and
there they must be provided for; as for the other child, which was born
in the parish of ----, that was already taken care of by the parish
officers there, for indeed they were so sensible of the distress of the
family that they had at first word done what was their part to do.

This was what these good women proposed, and bade me leave the rest to
them. I was at first sadly afflicted at the thoughts of parting with my
children, and especially at that terrible thing, their being taken into
the parish keeping; and then a hundred terrible things came into my
thoughts, viz., of parish children being starved at nurse; of their
being ruined, let grow crooked, lamed, and the like, for want of being
taken care of; and this sunk my very heart within me.

But the misery of my own circumstances hardened my heart against my own
flesh and blood; and when I considered they must inevitably be starved,
and I too if I continued to keep them about me, I began to be reconciled
to parting with them all, anyhow and anywhere, that I might be freed
from the dreadful necessity of seeing them all perish, and perishing
with them myself. So I agreed to go away out of the house, and leave the
management of the whole matter to my maid Amy and to them; and
accordingly I did so, and the same afternoon they carried them all away
to one of their aunts.

Amy, a resolute girl, knocked at the door, with the children all with
her, and bade the eldest, as soon as the door was open, run in, and the
rest after her. She set them all down at the door before she knocked,
and when she knocked she stayed till a maid-servant came to the door;
"Sweetheart," said she, "pray go in and tell your mistress here are her
little cousins come to see her from ----," naming the town where we
lived, at which the maid offered to go back. "Here, child," says Amy,
"take one of 'em in your hand, and I'll bring the rest;" so she gives
her the least, and the wench goes in mighty innocently, with the little
one in her hand, upon which Amy turns the rest in after her, shuts the
door softly, and marches off as fast as she could.

Just in the interval of this, and even while the maid and her mistress
were quarrelling (for the mistress raved and scolded