Listen to me. This is a matter of business, with which
sympathies and sentiments have nothing to do. As a mutual friend, I wish
to arrange it in a satisfactory manner, if possible; and thus the
case stands.--If you are very poor now, it's your own choice. You have
friends who, in case of need, are always ready to help you. My friend is
in a more destitute and desolate situation than most men, and, you and
he being linked together in a common cause, he naturally looks to you to
assist him. He has boarded and lodged with me a long time (for as I
said just now, I am very soft-hearted), and I quite approve of his
entertaining this opinion. You have always had a roof over your head; he
has always been an outcast. You have your son to comfort and assist you;
he has nobody at all. The advantages must not be all one side. You are
in the same boat, and we must divide the ballast a little more equally.'
She was about to speak, but he checked her, and went on.
'The only way of doing this, is by making up a little purse now and then
for my friend; and that's what I advise. He bears you no malice that I
know of, ma'am: so little, that although you have treated him harshly
more than once, and driven him, I may say, out of doors, he has that
regard for you that I believe even if you disappointed him now, he would
consent to take charge of your son, and to make a man of him.
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