up, and as I return through Salisbury
I will let you know what your brother says." She again shook her
head. "At any rate, we must try, Carry. When things are difficult,
they cannot be mended by people sitting down and crying. I will
ask your brother; and if he refuses, I will endeavour to think of
something else. Next to your father and mother, he is certainly the
first that should be asked to look to you." Then he said much to her
as to her condition, preached to her the little sermon with which he
had come prepared; was as stern to her as his nature and love would
allow,--though, indeed, his words were tender enough. He strove to
make her understand that she could have no escape from the dirt and
vileness and depth of misery into which she had fallen, without the
penalty of a hard, laborious life, in which she must submit to be
regarded as one whose place in the world was very low. He asked her
whether she did not hate the disgrace and the ignominy and the vile
wickedness of her late condition. "Yes, indeed, sir," she answered,
with her eyes still only half-raised towards him. What other answer
could she make? He would fain have drawn from her some deep and
passionate expression of repentance, some fervid promise of future
rectitude, some eager offer to bear all other hardships, so that
she might be saved from a renewal of the past misery. But he knew
that no such eloquence, no such energy, no such ecstacy, would be
forthcoming. And he knew, also, that humble, contrite, and wretched
as was the girl now, the nature within her bosom was not changed.
Were he to place her in a reformatory, she would not stay there. Were
he to make arrangements with Mrs. Stiggs, who in her way seemed to
be a decent, hard-working woman,--to make arrangements for her board
and lodging, with some collateral regulations as to occupation,
needle-work, and the like,--she would not adhere to them. The change
from a life of fevered, though most miserable, excitement, to one of
dull, pleasureless, and utterly uninteresting propriety, is one that
can hardly be made without the assistance of binding control. Could
she have been sent to the mill, and made subject to her mother's
softness as well as to her mother's care, there might have been room
for confident hope. And then, too,--but let not the reader read this
amiss,--because she was pretty and might be made bright again, and
because he was young, and because he loved her, he longed, were it
poss