'So far,' he
reasoned, 'from cutting off this child from inheritance of my
estates, as I have done, I should have rejoiced in the possession of
him! He is of pure stock on one side at least, whilst in the
ordinary run of affairs he would have been a commoner to the bone.'
Being a man, whatever his faults, of good old beliefs in the
divinity of kings and those about 'em, the more he overhauled the
case in this light, the more strongly did his poor wife's conduct in
improving the blood and breed of the Petrick family win his heart.
He considered what ugly, idle, hard-drinking scamps many of his own
relations had been; the miserable scriveners, usurers, and
pawnbrokers that he had numbered among his forefathers, and the
probability that some of their bad qualities would have come out in
a merely corporeal child, to give him sorrow in his old age, turn
his black hairs gray, his gray hairs white, cut down every stick of
timber, and Heaven knows what all, had he not, like a skilful
gardener, minded his grafting and changed the sort; till at length
this right-minded man fell down on his knees every night and morning
and thanked God that he was not as other meanly descended fathers in
such matters.
It was in the peculiar disposition of the Petrick family that the
satisfaction which ultimately settled in Timothy's breast found
nourishment. The Petricks had adored the nobility, and plucked them
at the same time.
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