ooks at your beck. You shall still be master here, provided you use
your influence to procure me a dinner."

His acquiescence in a pacific system was extremely reluctant and
gradual. He laid aside one sullen tone and wrathful look after the
other; and, at length, consented not only to supply me with a dinner,
but to partake of it with me. Nothing was more a topic of surprise to
himself than his forbearance. He knew not how it was. He had never been
treated so before. He was not proof against entreaty and submission; but
I had neither supplicated nor submitted. The stuff that I was made of
was at once damnably tough and devilishly pliant. When he thought of my
impudence, in staying in his house after he had bade me leave it, he was
tempted to resume his passion. When he reflected on my courage, in
making light of his anger, notwithstanding his known impetuosity and my
personal inferiority, he could not withhold his esteem. But my patience
under his rebukes, my unalterable equanimity, and my ready consent to
the validity of his claims, soothed and propitiated him.

An exemption from blows and abuse was all that I could gain from this
man. I told him the truth, with regard to my own history, so far as it
was connected with the Hadwins. I exhibited, in affecting colours, the
helpless condition of Eliza; but could extort from him nothing but his
consent that, if she chose, she might come and live with him. He would
give her victuals and clothes for so much house-work as she was able to
do. If she chose to live elsewhere, he promised not to molest her, or
intermeddle in her concerns. The house and land were his by law, and he
would have them.

It was not my province to revile or expostulate with him. I stated what
measures would be adopted by a man who regarded the interest of others
more than his own; who was anxious for the welfare of an innocent girl,
connected with him so closely by the ties of kindred, and who was
destitute of what is called natural friends. If he did not cancel, for
her sake, his bond and mortgage, he would, at least, afford her a frugal
maintenance. He would extend to her, in all emergencies, his counsel and
protection.

All that, he said, was sheer nonsense. He could not sufficiently wonder
at my folly, in proposing to him to make a free gift of a hundred rich
acres, to a girl too who scarcely knew her right hand from her left;
whom the first cunning young rogue like myself would _chouse_ out of th