"For the boys, let them rough it; I have nothing to say. But, Borrow, when you go back, tell Anna Westlake there is a home for her here, whenever she is ready to come and take it."
"I will tell her, if you will, that her cousins here wish to have news of her, and are ready to love her and hers. But propose to her a life of dependence! You must get a bolder man to do that errand."
"It should not be a life of dependence. She may surely do for her own kindred what she does for a pack of village children. She should be an elder sister to my girls. Why, Borrow, I should like to have her here. I don't put it in the form of a favor to her. Her being here would be a great pleasure and a great good to my little Fanny."
"And her own brothers?"
"She should be able to do for them all she does now."
"All she does now! Do you know what that is?"
"She should be able to do more than she does now. Reginald should live as he ought."
"He shall have three good meals a day, and cooked for him: is that it? And the two little boys?"
"They should be as much better off as he. I do not forget that I have the whole inheritance, which might have been divided."
"Yes, the means for their material bread might be supplied by another; but it is from her own soul that she feeds theirs. And then, homage, Westlake,—homage, that sweetest draught! Do you suppose it is least sweet when most deserved?"