Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/43

 'So long as you are there, I shall never stop. What is it you want me to advise you? to take the child, or to leave the mother to groan herself out?'

'I want you to tell me whether he'll curse me when he grows older.'

'That depends upon what you do. However, he will probably do it in either case.'

'You don't believe that, because you like him,' said Amanda, with acuteness.

'Precisely; and he'll curse me too. He'll curse every one. He won't be happy.'

'I don't know how you think I bring him up,' the little dressmaker remarked, with dignity.

'You don't bring him up; he brings you up.'

'That's what you have always said; but you don't know. If you mean that he does as he likes, then he ought to be happy. It ain't kind of you to say he won't be,' Miss Pynsent added, reproachfully.

'I would say anything you like, if what I say would help the matter. He's a thin-skinned, morbid, mooning little beggar, with a good deal of imagination and not much perseverance, who will expect a good deal more of life than he will find in it. That's why he won't be happy.'

Miss Pynsent listened to this description of her protégé with an appearance of criticising it mentally; but in reality she didn't know what 'morbid' meant, and didn't like to ask. 'He's the cleverest person I know, except yourself,' she said in a moment; for Mr. Vetch's words had been in the key of what she thought most remarkable in him. What that was she would have been unable to say.