Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. III, 1866.djvu/59

Rh sooner than I thought they would. Felix may contradict me if he will; but there he is in prison, and here am I, with nothing in the world to bless myself with but half-a-crown a-week as I've saved by my own scraping, and this house I've got to pay rent for. It's not me has done wrong, Mr Lyon; there's nobody can say it of me—not the orphin child on my knee is more innicent o' riot and murder and anything else as is bad. But when you've got a son so masterful and stopping medicines as Providence has sent, and his betters have been taking up and down the country since before he was a baby, it's o' no use being good here below. But he was a baby, Mr Lyon, and I gave him the breast,"—here poor Mrs Holt's motherly love overcame her expository eagerness, and she fell more and more to crying as she spoke—"And to think there's folks saying now as he'll be transported, and his hair shaved off, and the treadmill, and everything. O dear!"

As Mrs Holt broke off into sobbing, little Job also, who had got a confused yet profound sense of sorrow, and of Felix being hurt and gone away, set up a little wail of wondering misery.

"Nay, Mistress Holt," said the minister soothingly, "enlarge not your grief by more than warrantable