"So am I. To-night, then, after we close the store, we will arrange our new bill of prices, and next week bring all hands down to it."
And they were just as good as their word. And it happened just as they said—the poor workwomen had to submit.
But we must return from our digression.
The child who, under the practical operation of a system of which the above dialogue gives some faint idea, had to go out from his home at the tender age of ten years, because his mother, with all her hard toil, early and late, at the prices she obtained for her labor, could not earn enough to provide a sufficiency of food and clothes for her children—that child passed on, unheeding, and, indeed, unhearing the jibes of the happier children of his mother's oppressor; and endeavored, sad and sorrowful as he felt, to nerve himself with something of a manly feeling. At Charlestown, Mr. Sharp got into his chaise, and, with the lad he had taken to raise, drove home.
"Well, here is the youngster, Mrs. Sharp," he said, on alighting from his vehicle. "He is rather smaller and punier than I like, but I have no doubt that he will prove willing and obedient."
"What is his name?" asked Mrs. S., who had a sharp chin, sharp nose, and sharp features throughout; and, with all, rather a sharp voice. She had no children of her own—those tender pledges being denied her, perhaps on account of the peculiar sharpness of her temper.
"His name is Henry," replied her husband.
"Henry what?"
"Henry Gaston, I believe. Isn't that it, my boy?"
Henry replied in the affirmative. Mr. Sharp then said—