"
"Bless me, madam! I never dreamed you would adopt a beggar child as your
heir; but I hope you mean to send it to the workhouse, if the gipsy
tramps it belongs to are not to be found?"
"We have not made up our minds, sir, as to the course we propose to
pursue," said Miss Betty, with outward dignity proportioned to her
inward doubts.
"My dear ladies," said the lawyer anxiously, "let me implore you not to
be rash. To adopt a child in the most favorable circumstances is the
greatest of risks. But if your benevolence _will_ take that line, pray
adopt some little boy out of one of your tenants' families. Even your
teaching will not make him brilliant, as he is likely to inherit the
minimum of intellectual capacity; but he will learn his catechism,
probably grow up respectable, and possibly grateful, since his
forefathers have (so Miss Kitty assures me) had all these virtues for
generations. But this baby is the child of a heathen, barbarous, and
wandering race. The propensities of the vagabonds who have deserted him
are in every drop of his blood. All the parsons in the diocese won't
make a Christian of him, and when (after anxieties I shudder to foresee)
you flatter yourself that he is civilized, he will run away and leave
his shoes and stockings behind him."
"He has a soul to be saved, if he is a gipsy," said Miss Kitty,
hysterically.
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