Folk
said it was a judgment on my Lady that she spoke sharp and hard to a
poor beggar woman with a child on each arm. It was not a week out
before my Lady herself was down, quite unexpected, as I may say, for
she was staying here for a week, with a lot of company, when these
three was born. They do say she was nigh beside herself that the like
of that should have happened to her. Mr. Wayland, he was not so ill
pleased, but the poor little things had to be got out of the house any
way, for she could not abear to hear of them. Mrs. Rolfe, as was an
old servant of the family, took that one, and I was right glad to have
you, my pretty one, for I had just lost my babe at a fortnight old,
and the third was sent to Goody Bowles, for want of a better. They
says as how my Lady means to bring them out one by one, and to make
as this here is bigger, and the other up stairs is lesser, and never
let on that they are all of an age."
The good gossip must have presumed greatly on the children's want of
comprehension if she did not suppose that they understood her at least
as well as the young lady to whom her dialect was strange.
"And has she not seen them?"
"Never till last Monday, if you'll believe me miss, when she drove
down in her coach, and the children were all brought home.
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