Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. III, 1866.djvu/61

Rh his old grandfather on parish pay, but I'm not that woman, Mr Lyon: I've a tender heart. And here's his little feet and toes, like marbil; do but look"—here Mrs Holt drew off Job's sock and shoe, and showed a well-washed little foot—"and you'll perhaps say I might take a lodger; but it's easy talking; it isn't everybody at a loose-end wants a parlour and a bedroom; and if anything bad happens to Felix, I may as well go and sit in the parish Pound, and nobody to buy me out; for it's beyond everything how the church members find fault with my son. But I think they might leave his mother to find fault; for queer and masterful he might be, and flying in the face of the very Scripture about the physic, but he was most clever beyond anything—that I will say—and was his own father's lawful child, and me his mother, that was Mary Wall thirty years before ever I married his father." Here Mrs Holt's feelings again became too much for her, but she struggled on to say, sobbingly, "And if they're to transport him, I should like to go to the prison and take the orphin child; for he was most fond of having him on his lap, and said he'd never marry; and there was One above overheard him, for he's been took at his word."

Mr Lyon listened with low groans, and then tried