ed your
husband's letter. But I ought perhaps to see how you have expressed
yourself. Have you got a copy?"
"It was too short, Mr. Sarrazin, to make a copy necessary."
"Do you mean you can remember it?"
"I can repeat it word for word. This was my reply: I refuse, positively,
to part with my child."
"No more like that?"
"No more."
Mr. Sarrazin looked at his client with undisguised admiration. "The
only time in all my long experience," he said, "in which I have found a
lady's letter capable of expressing itself strongly in a few words. What
a lawyer you will make, Mrs. Linley, when the rights of women invade my
profession!"
He put his hand into his pocket and produced a letter addressed to
himself.
Watching him anxiously, the ladies saw his bright face become
overclouded with anxiety. "I am the wretched bearer of bad news," he
resumed, "and if I fidget in my chair, that is the reason for it. Let us
get to the point--and let us get off it again as soon as possible. Here
is a letter, written to me by Mr. Linley's lawyer. If you will take my
advice you will let me say what the substance of it is, and then put
it back in my pocket. I doubt if a woman has influenced these cruel
instructions, Mrs. Presty; and, therefore, I doubt if a woman influenced
the letter which led the way to them. Did I not say just now that I was
coming to the point? and here I am wandering further and further away
from it. A lawyer is human; there is the only excuse. Now, Mrs. Linley,
in two words; your husband is determined to have little Miss Kitty; and
the law, when he applies to it, is his obedient humble servant."
"Do you mean that the law takes my child away from me?"
"I am ashamed, madam, to think that I live by the law; but that, I must
own, is exactly what it is capable of doing in the present case. Compose
yourself, I beg and pray. A time will come when women will remind men
that the mother bears the child and feeds the child, and will
insist that the mother's right is the best right of the two. In the
meanwhile--"
"In the meanwhile, Mr. Sarrazin, I won't submit to the law."
"Quite right, Catherine!" cried Mrs. Presty. "Exactly what I should do,
in your place."
Mr. Sarrazin listened patiently. "I am all attention, good ladies," he
said, with the gentlest resignation. "Let me hear how you mean to do
it."
The good ladies looked at each other. They discovered that it is one
thing to set an abuse at defiance in w
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