“I'd love to have you speak up, Josiah Allen, and tell me how wimmen would go to work to get any lower in the opinion of men; how they could get into any lower grade of society than they are minglin' with now. They are ranked now by the laws of the United States, and the will of men, with idiots, lunatics, and criminals. And how pretty it looks for you men to try to scare us, and make us think there is a lower class we could get into! There hain't any lower class that we can get into than the ones we are in now; and you know it, Josiah Allen. And you sha'n't scare Cicely by tryin' to make her think there is.”
He quailed. He knew there wuzn't. He knew he had said it to scare us, Cicely and me, and he felt considerable meachin' to think he had got found out in it. But he went on in ruther of a meek tone,—
“It would be apt to make talk, Cicely.”
“What do I care for talk?” says she. “What do I care for honor, or praise, or blame? I only want to try to save my boy.”
And she kep' right on with her tender, earnest voice, and her eyes a shinin' like stars,—
“Have I not a right to help him? Is he not my child? Did not God give me a right to him, when I went down into the darkness with God alone, and a soul was given into my hands? Did I not suffer for him? Have I not been blessed in him? Why, his little hands held me back from the gates of death. By all the rights of heavenliest joy and deepest agony—is he not mine? Have I not a right to help him in his future?
“Now I hold him in my arms, my flesh, my blood, my life. I hold him on my heart now: he is mine. I can shield him from danger: if he should fall into the flames, I could reach in after him, and die with him, or save him. God and man give me that right now: I do not have to ask for it.