"Well, Vixen, well then, how are the babbies?" said the schoolmaster,
making haste towards the chimney-corner and holding the candle over
the low hamper, where two extremely blind puppies lifted up their heads
towards the light from a nest of flannel and wool. Vixen could not even
see her master look at them without painful excitement: she got into the
hamper and got out again the next moment, and behaved with true feminine
folly, though looking all the while as wise as a dwarf with a large
old-fashioned head and body on the most abbreviated legs.
"Why, you've got a family, I see, Mr. Massey?" said Adam, smiling, as
he came into the kitchen. "How's that? I thought it was against the law
here."
"Law? What's the use o' law when a man's once such a fool as to let a
woman into his house?" said Bartle, turning away from the hamper with
some bitterness. He always called Vixen a woman, and seemed to have lost
all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech. "If I'd known
Vixen was a woman, I'd never have held the boys from drowning her; but
when I'd got her into my hand, I was forced to take to her. And now you
see what she's brought me to--the sly, hypocritical wench"--Bartle spoke
these last words in a rasping tone of reproach, and looked at Vixen, who
poked down her head and turned up her eyes towards him with a keen
sense of opprobrium--"and contrived to be brought to bed on a Sunday at
church-time.
Pages:
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396