"
"It is a life for a life--more than that, ma'am--two lives for a life; and
now the life of my boy is asked for."
A strange look passed over Mrs. Rivers' face. She knew, of course, that
she stood well within the law, that she was doing no more than a hundred
other fashionable women were doing at the same moment; but this plain girl
had a plain way of putting things, and she did not care for it to be
publicly known that the life of her child had been bought with the lives
of two poor children. But her temper was getting the better of her.
"He'll only be a drag on you. You'll never be able to bring him up, poor
little bastard child."
"It is wicked of you to speak like that, ma'am, though it is I who am
saying it. It is none of the child's fault if he hasn't got a father, nor
is it right that he should be deserted for that... and it is not for you
to tell me to do such a thing. If you had made sacrifice of yourself in
the beginning and nursed your own child such thoughts would not have come
to you. But when you hire a poor girl such as me to give the milk that
belongs to another to your child, you think nothing of the poor deserted
one. He is but a bastard, you say, and had better be dead and done with. I
see it all now; I have been thinking it out. It is all so hidden up that
the meaning is not clear at first, but what it comes to is this, that fine
folks like you pays the money, and Mrs.
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