Page:Reading for winter evenings.pdf/20

20 said the captain to the man, "set down those things." The man hesitated. The captain renewed his command in a peremptory tone, and then advanced towards the woman. They looked earnestly at each other. Through her pale and emaciated features, he saw something of his little smiler; and at length, in a faint voice, he addressed her, “Are you Amelia Cornish?"—“That was my name," she replied.—"I am your uncle," he cried, clasping her in his arms, and sobbing as if his heart would break. “My uncle!" said she, and fainted. He was just able to set her down on the only remaining chair, and take her child from her. Two other young children came running up, and began to scream with terror. Amelia recovered herself. “Oh, Sir, what a situation you see me in!"—"A situation, indeed!" said he, "poor forsaken creature! but you have one friend left!"

He then asked what was become of her husband. She told him, that having fatigued himself with walking every day to a great distance for a little employment, that scarcely afforded them bread, he had fallen ill, and was now in an hospital; and that, after having been obliged to sell most of their little furniture and clothes for present subsistence, their landlord had just seized their only remaining bed for some arrears of rent. The captain immediately discharged the debt; and, causing the bed to be brought up again, dismissed the man. He then entered into a conversation with his niece, about the events that had befallen her. "Alas! Sir," said she, "I am sensible I was greatly to blame in disobeying my father, and leaving his roof as I did; but perhaps something might be alleged in my excuse—at least, years of calamity and distress may be an expiation. As to my husband, however, he has never given me the least cause of complaint—he has ever been kind and good; and what we have suffered has been through misfortune, and not fault. To be sure, when we married, we did not know how a family was to be maintained. His was a poor employment; and sickness and other accidents soon brought us to a state of poverty, from which we could never retrieve ourselves. He, poor man ! was never idle when he could help it, and denied himself every indulgence in order to provide for the wants of me and my children. I did my part, too, as well as I was able. But my father's unrelenting severity made me quite heart-broken; and though my sisters, two or three times, gave us a little relief in our pressing necessities,—for nothing else could have made me ask in the manner I did,—yet they would never permit me to see them, and for some time past have entirely abandoned us. I thought Heaven had abandoned