Don't be ill-natured,
Dorothea."
"I won't if I can help it."
"I know your nature, how good it is." Here Dorothy shook her head. "Only
think of me and of my sufferings! I haven't come to this without
suffering." Then the poor woman began to cry.
"I feel for you through it all,--I do," said Dolly.
"That poor man! To have to be always with him, and always doing my best
to keep him out of mischief!"
"A man who will do nothing else must do harm."
"Of course he must. But what can he do now? And the children! I can
see--of course I know that they are not all that they ought to be. But
with six of them, and nobody but myself, how can I do it all? And they
are his children as well as mine." Dolly's heart was filled with pity as
she heard this, which she knew to be so true! "In answering you they
have uppish, bad ways. They don't like to submit to one so near their
own age."
"Not a word that has come from the mouth of one of them addressed to
myself has ever done them any harm with my father. That is what you
mean?"
"No,--but with yourself."
"I do not take anger--against them--out of the room with me."
"Now, about Mr. Juniper."
"The question is one much too big for me. Am I to tell my father?"
"I was thinking that--if you would do so!"
"I cannot tell him that he ought to find five hundred pounds for Mr.
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