'He was here late the last evening,' Mistress Ratcliffe said, 'and is, with George, anxious to furnish Mr Sidney with the pick of the horses in the stable. Humphrey can scarce stir from Mr Sidney.'
'So it seems,' Dorothy said. 'Methinks, where there's a will there's a way; but we shall have his company in London.'
'Yes, and George's also. You will favour my poor boy's suit, Doll.'
'Your poor boy! nay, aunt, he is not worthy of pity, when he wins favour from a peerless beauty like Mistress Forrester. But let be, it will not break my heart if he gives you this fair country maid for your daughter, who has not—so I have heard—so much as a brass farthing to call her own.'
Deeply chagrined, and with an uneasy suspicion that Dorothy might be right in what she said, Mistress Ratcliffe left her niece to repose, saying to herself, 'She has a tongue and a temper of her own, but we will soon tame her when we get her here.'
CHAPTER IV
THE HAWK AND THE BIRD
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'So doth the fox the lamb destroy we see, The lion fierce, the beaver, roe or gray, The hawk the fowl, the greater wrong the less, The lofty proud the lowly poor oppress.' John Davies, 1613. |
When George left Lucy at the door of Ford Place, she ran quickly through the kitchen, where Mistress Forrester was resting on the settle after the labours of the day.