CHAPTER XXIX 431
" The mistress has been dead this mony a year."
" Have you lived with the family long?" " I ' ve lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three."
" That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant. I will say so much for you, though you have had the incivility to call me a beggar."
She again regarded me with a surprised stare. " I believe," she said, " I was quite mista ' en in my thoughts of you: but there is so mony cheats goes about, you mun forgie me."
" And though," I continued, rather severely, " you wished to turn me from the door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog."
" Well, it was hard: but what can a body do? I thought more o ' th ' childer nor of mysel: poor things! They ' ve like nobody to tak ' care on ' em but me. I ' m like to look sharpish."
I maintained a grave silence for some minutes. " You munnut think too hardly of me," she again remarked.
" But I do think hardly of you," I said; " and I ' ll tell you why-- not so much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I had no ' brass ' and no house. Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime."
" No more I ought," said she: " Mr. St. John tells me so too; and I see I wor wrang-- but I ' ve clear a different notion on you now to what I had. You look a raight down dacent little crater."
" That will do-- I forgive you now. Shake hands."