The Clever Woman of the Family

"If you have been a simpleton, does that make him an honest man?" said

Mr. Grey, impatiently.

"No," said Rachel, "but--"

"What?"

"My credulity may have caused his dishonesty," she said, bringing, at

last, the words to serve the idea.

"Look you here, Rachel," said Mr. Grey, constraining himself to argue

patiently with his old friend's daughter; "it does not simply lie

between you and him--a silly girl who has let herself be taken in by a

sharper. That would be no more than giving a sixpence to a fellow that

tells me he lost his arm at Sebastopol when he has got it sewn up in a

bag. But you have been getting subscriptions from all the world, making

yourself answerable to them for having these children educated, and

then, for want of proper superintendence, or the merest rational

precaution, leaving them to this barbarous usage. I don't want to be

hard upon you, but you are accountable for all this; you have made

yourself so, and unless you wish to be regarded as a sharer in the

iniquity, the least you can do by way of compensation, is not to make

yourself an obstruction to the course of justice."

"I don't much care how I am regarded," said Rachel, with subdued tone

and sunken head; "I only want to do right, and not act spitefully and

vindictively before he has had warning to defend himself."

"Or to set off to delude as many equal foo--mistaken people as he can

find elsewhere! Eh, Rachel? Don't you see, it this friend of yours

be innocent, a summons will not hurt him, it will only give him the

opportunity of clearing himself."

"Yes, I see," owned Rachel, and overpowered, though far from satisfied,

she allowed herself to be brought back, and did what was required

of her, to the intense relief of her mother. During her three minute

conference no one in the study had ventured on speaking or stirring, and

Mrs. Curtis would not thank her biographer for recording the wild alarms

that careered through her brain, as to the object of her daughter's

tete-a-tete with the magistrate.

It was over at last, and the hall of justice broke up. Mary Morris was

at once in her mother's arms, and in a few minutes more making up for

all past privations by a substantial meal in the kitchen. But Mrs.

Kelland had gone to Avoncester to purchase thread, and only her daughter

Susan had come up, the girl who was supposed to be a sort of spider,

with no capacities beyond her web. Nor did Rachel think Lovedy capable

of walking down to Mackarel Lane, nor well enough for the comfortless

chairs and the third part of a bed. No, Mr. Grey's words that Rachel was

accountable for the children's sufferings had gone to her heart. Pity

was there and indignation, but these had brought such an anguish of

self-accusation as she could only appease by lavishing personal care

upon the chief sufferer. She carried the child to her own sitting-room

and made a couch for her before the fire, sending Susan away with the

assurance that Lovedy should stay at the Homestead, and be nursed and

fed till she was well and strong again. Fanny, who had accompanied her,

thought the child very ill, and was urgent that the doctor should be

sent for; but between Rachel and the faculty of Avonmouth there was a

deadly feud, and the proposal was scouted. Hunger and a bad cold were

easily treated, and maybe there was a spark of consolation in having a

patient all to herself and her homoeopathic book.