"I don't quite see what there is to worry you in that. The Hadlows are very good sort of people."
"I should think they were very good sort of people! Canon Hadlow is one of the best men in Oldchester; or in all England, for the matter of that. And he's a gentleman to the marrow of his bones. But what sort of a position has my grand-daughter among the Hadlows and their belongings?"
"A very nice position, I should say."
"A very nice position!" exclaimed Mrs. Dobbs, who seemed determined to repeat all poor Mr. Weatherhead's speeches in a tone of disdainful irony. "That's so like you, Jo! She thinks it a very nice position, too, poor lamb. She knows nothing of the world, bless her innocent heart. And, for all her seventeen years, she is the merest child in some things. But you might know better. You are not seventeen years old, Jo Weatherhead."
"Certainly not," assented he emphatically.
"The fact of the matter is that, whether by good luck or bad luck, May does not belong to my sphere or my class. She's a Cheffington. She has the ways of a lady, and the education of a lady, and she has a right to the position of a lady. If that father of hers gives her nothing else he might give her that; and he shall, if I can make him."
"Perhaps it might have been better, after all, if you had not sent the child back to her old school, but just brought her up here, under your own eye, in a plain sort of way. It would have been better for you, anyhow."
"I don't know that."
"Why, you'd have been spared a good many sacrifices. There's not another woman in England would have done what you've done, Sarah."
"Nonsense; there are plenty of women in England as big fools as me. Even that wooden old figurehead of a dowager—Lord forgive me, she's dead and gone!—had the grace to pay the child's schooling as long as she lived."