"Muster Fenwick, I don't suppose as any one as asn't tried it knows what it is. I hopes you mayn't never know it; nor it ain't likely. Muster Fenwick, I'd sooner see her dead body stretched afore me,—and I loved her a'most as well as any father ever loved his da'ter,—I'd sooner a see'd her brought home to the door stiff and stark than know her to be the thing she is." His hesitation had now given way to emphasis, and he raised his hand as he spoke. The Vicar caught it and held it in his own, and strove to find some word to say as the old man paused in his speech. But to Jacob Brattle it was hard for a clergyman to find any word to say on such an occasion. Of what use could it be to preach of repentance to one who believed nothing; or to tell of the opportunity which forgiveness by an earthly parent might afford to the sinner of obtaining lasting forgiveness elsewhere? But let him have said what he might, the miller would not have listened. He was full of that which lay upon his own heart. "If they only know'd what them as cares for 'em 'd has to bear, maybe they'd think a little. But it ain't natural they should know, Muster Fenwick, and one's a'most tempted to say that a man 'd better have no child at all."
"Think of your son George, Mr. Brattle, and of Mrs. Jay."
"What's them to me? He sends the girl a twenty-pun'-note, and I wish he'd a kep' it. As for t'other, she wouldn't let the girl inside her door! It's here she has to come."
"What comfort would you have, Mr. Brattle, without Fanny?"
"Fanny! I'm not saying nothing against Fanny. Not but what she hadn't no business to let the girl into the house in the middle of the night without saying a word to me."
"Would you have had her leave her sister outside in the cold and damp all night?"
"Why didn't she come and ax? All the same, I ain't a saying nowt again Fanny. But, Muster Fenwick, if you ever come to have one foot bad o' the gout, it won't make you right to know that the other ain't got it. Y'll have the pain a gnawing of you from the bad foot till you clean forget all the rest o' your body. It's so with me, I knows."
"What can I say to you, Mr. Brattle? I do feel for you. I do,—I do."
"Not a doubt on it, Muster Fenwick. They all on 'em feels for me. They all on 'em knows as how I'm bruised and mangled a'most as though I'd fallen through into that water-wheel. There ain't one in all Bull'ompton as don't know as Jacob Brattle is a broken man along of his da'ter that is a—"
"Silence, Mr. Brattle. You shall not say it. She is not that;—at any rate not now. Have you no knowledge that sin may be left behind and deserted as well as virtue?"