Such as she ain't fit to be trusted with a
daughter; and Mr. Philip knows that. He always was a deep one. But I'm
glad he looks after Missy: there's many men, having got fast hold of th'
father's brass, would let th' daughter marry Old Scratch, for the sake of
gettin' rid of her."
This is how Mrs. Woolper argued the matter. She came of a prudent race;
and anything like prudence seemed to her a commendable virtue. She wished
to think well of her master; for her he had been a Providence in the hour
of calamity and old age. Where else could she look, if not to him? And to
suspect him, or think ill of him, was to reject the one refuge offered to
her distress. A magnanimous independence of spirit is not an easy virtue
for the old and friendless and poor. The drowning wretch will scarcely
question the soundness of the plank that sustains him upon the
storm-tossed billows; nor was Mrs. Woolper inclined to question the
motives of the man to whom she now owed her daily bread.
It is possible that before invoking Mrs. Woolper from the ashes of the
past to take her seat by the hearthstone of the present, Mr. Sheldon may
have contemplated the question of her return in all its bearings, and
may have assured himself that she was his own, by a tie not easily
broken--his bond-slave, fettered hand and foot by the bondage of
necessity.
"What choice can she have, except the choice between my house and the
workhouse?" he may naturally have asked himself; "and is it likely she
will quarrel with her bread-and-butter in order to fall back upon dry
bread?" Mr.
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