ould have his
two sons brought down to see him; which accordingly was done, and where
I entertained them with all the kindness and tenderness that they could
expect from their mother-in-law; and who pretended to be so ever since
they were two or three years old.

This supposing us to have been so long married was not difficult at all,
in a country where we had been seen together about that time, viz.,
eleven years and a half before, and where we had never been seen
afterwards till we now returned together: this being seen together was
also openly owned and acknowledged, of course, by our friend the
merchant at Rotterdam, and also by the people in the house where we both
lodged in the same city, and where our first intimacies began, and who,
as it happened, were all alive; and therefore, to make it the more
public, we made a tour to Rotterdam again, lodged in the same house, and
was visited there by our friend the merchant, and afterwards invited
frequently to his house, where he treated us very handsomely.

This conduct of my spouse, and which he managed very cleverly, was
indeed a testimony of a wonderful degree of honesty and affection to our
little son; for it was done purely for the sake of the child.

I call it an honest affection, because it was from a principle of
honesty that he so earnestly concerned himself to prevent the scandal
which would otherwise have fallen upon the child, who was itself
innocent; and as it was from this principle of justice that he so
earnestly solicited me, and conjured me by the natural affections of a
mother, to marry him when it was yet young within me and unborn, that
the child might not suffer for the sin of its father and mother; so,
though at the same time he really loved me very well, yet I had reason
to believe that it was from this principle of justice to the child that
he came to England again to seek me with design to marry me, and, as he
called it, save the innocent lamb from infamy worse than death.

It was with a just reproach to myself that I must repeat it again, that
I had not the same concern for it, though it was the child of my own
body; nor had I ever the hearty affectionate love to the child that he
had. What the reason of it was I cannot tell; and, indeed, I had shown a
general neglect of the child through all the gay years of my London
revels, except that I sent Amy to look upon it now and then, and to pay
for its nursing; as for me, I scarce saw it four tim