owhere will ye find a maid that's his match like
his own wife. Then there they be. Are they together as should be? O Lord
no! Months they been divided. Then she all lonely and exposed, I went,
and fetched her out of seducers' ways--which they may say what they
like, but the inn'cent is most open to when they're healthy and
confidin'--I fetch her, and--the liberty--boxed her safe in my own
house. So much for that sweet! That you may do with women. But it's
him--Mr. Richard--I am bold, I know, but there--I'm in for it, and the
Lord'll help me! It's him, Sir Austin, in this great metropolis, warm
from a young marriage. It's him, and--I say nothin' of her, and how
sweet she bears it, and it's eating her at a time when Natur' should
have no other trouble but the one that's goin' on it's him, and I
ask--so bold--shall there--and a Christian gentlemen his father--shall
there be a tug 'tween him as a son and him as a husband--soon to be
somethin' else? I speak bold out--I'd have sons obey their fathers, but
a priest's words spoke over them, which they're now in my ears, I say
I ain't a doubt on earth--I'm sure there ain't one in heaven--which
dooty's the holier of the two."

Sir Austin heard her to an end. Their views on the junction of the sexes
were undoubtedly akin. To be lectured on his prime subject, however, was
slightly disagreeable, and to be obliged mentally to assent to this old
lady's doctrine was rather humiliating, when it could not be averred
that he had latterly followed it out. He sat cross-legged and silent, a
finger to his temple.

"One gets so addle-gated thinkin' many things," said Mrs. Berry, simply.
"That's why we see wonder clever people goin' wrong--to my mind. I think
it's al'ays the plan in a dielemmer to pray God and walk forward."

The keen-witted soft woman was tracking the baronet's thoughts, and she
had absolutely run him down and taken an explanation out of his mouth,
by which Mrs. Berry was to have been informed that he had acted from a
principle of his own, and devolved a wisdom she could not be expected to
comprehend.

Of course he became advised immediately that it would be waste of time
to direct such an explanation to her inferior capacity.

He gave her his hand, saying, "My son has gone out of town to see his
cousin, who is ill. He will return in two or three days, and then they
will both come to me at Raynham."

Mrs. Berry took the tips of his fingers, and went half-way to the floor