“Oh, Edward!” exclaimed the lady, almost dropping the letter, “can he ask us to give up our boy—our dear son?”
“He offers to adopt him as his own.”
“My George! oh! no, no, no!—we can never, never consent to that!”
“Why, you see, Eliza,” said her husband, speaking rapidly, “if I have not assistance now, all will be ruin—I shall have no means of supporting my family. Perhaps this is the best thing for George himself—”
“I can hardly think it,” said the mother, with a look of intense pain. “Hardcastle gives us to understand that the separation from our boy must be ‘complete—final’—these are his very words—that ‘George must not look to two fathers or two homes—’”
“Hardcastle dislikes me,” muttered Mr. Ellerslie to himself.
“And even if we could bear to part,” continued his wife, with something like a stifled sob, “Hardcastle is not one to whom our boy could look up with the affection—the reverence—” she stopped for a moment, as if to swallow down her tears. “Hardcastle has temper, he is strange, eccentric. Our George would be wretched with him. Oh no! it cannot be!” she added with energy; “it would be like sacrificing—selling our child!”
“If we refuse Hardcastle’s offer,” said her husband, “we offend him for ever; and you know the consequences, Eliza.”
She sat with her hand pressed over her eyes, while Mr. Ellerslie continued to speak,
“He can afford George advantages, comforts, which it would not be in our power to bestow. I am not certain whether, all selfish motives set aside, the boy would not be happier at Bristol than here.”