He was faint with the strong power of his own
conviction, and with his inability to move his sister. But she
was shaken. She sat very still for a quarter of an hour or more
while he leaned back, exhausted by his own feelings.
"The poor child!" said she at length--"the poor, poor child! what
it will have to struggle through and endure! Do you remember
Thomas Wilkins, and the way he threw the registry of his birth
and baptism back in your face? Why, he would not have the
situation; he went to sea, and was drowned, rather than present
the record of his shame."
"I do remember it all. It has often haunted me. She must
strengthen her child to look to God, rather than to man's
opinion. It will be the discipline, the penance, she has
incurred. She must teach it to be (humanly speaking)
self-dependent."
"But after all," said Miss Benson (for she had known and esteemed
poor Thomas Wilkins, and had mourned over his untimely death, and
the recollection thereof softened her)--"after all, it might be
concealed. The very child need never know its illegitimacy."
"How?" asked her brother.
"Why--we know so little about her yet; but in that letter, it
said she had no friends;--now, could she not go into quite a
fresh place, and be passed off as a widow?"
Ah, tempter! unconscious tempter! Here was a way of evading the
trials for the poor little unborn child, of which Mr. Benson had
never thought.
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