Page:Wiggin--Marm Lisa.djvu/93

Rh said Mrs. Grubb gloomily, "if I am not freed from the shackles that keep me in daily slavery. The twins are as likely to go to the gallows as anywhere; and as for Lisa, she would be a good deal better off dead than alive, as Mrs. Sylvester says."

"That isn’t for us to decide," said Mistress Mary soberly. "I might have been careless and impertinent enough to say it a year ago, but not now. Lisa has all along been the victim of cruel circumstances.  Wherever she has been sinned against through ignorance, it is possible, barely possible, that the fault may be atoned for; but any neglect of duty now would be a criminal offense.  It does not behoove us to be too scornful when we remember that the taint (fortunately a slight one) transmitted to poor little Lisa existed in greater or less degree in Handel and Molière, Julius Cæsar, Napoleon, Petrarch, and Mohammed.  The world is a good deal richer for them, certainly."

Mrs. Grubb elevated her head, the light of interest dawned in her eye, and she whipped her notebook out of her pocket.

"Is that a fact?" she asked excitedly.

"It is a fact."