"The fact of the matter is that, whether by good luck or bad luck, May does not belong to my sphere or my class. She's a Cheffington. She has the ways of a lady, and the education of a lady, and she has a right to the position of a lady. If that father of hers gives her nothing else he might give her that; and he shall, if I can make him." "Perhaps it might have been better, after all, if you had not sent the child back to her old school, but just brought her up here, under your own eye, in a plain sort of way. It would have been better for _you_, anyhow." "I don't know that." "Why, you'd have been spared a good many sacrifices. There's not another woman in England would have done what you've done, Sarah." "Nonsense; there are plenty of women in England as big fools as me. Even that wooden old figurehead of a dowager--Lord forgive me, she's dead and gone!--had the grace to pay the child's schooling as long as she lived." "She!" exclaimed Jo Weatherhead, firing up suddenly, and tapping his meerschaum sharply against the hob. "That's a very different pair of shoes. She could afford it a precious sight better than you. What did _she_ ever deprive herself of? I say there's not another woman in England would have done what you've done, and it's no good your contradicting." "There, bless the man! Don't let us quarrel about it." "But I shall quarrel about it, unless you give in. Here's the case fairly put:--A young spark runs away with your only daughter, and pretty well breaks your heart. He takes her wandering about into foreign parts, and you only get news of her now and then, and never good news. He's too fine a gentleman to do a stroke of work for his family, but as soon as he has run through his bit of money he's not too fine a gentleman to fall into disreputable ways of life, nor yet to let who will look after his motherless little girl, and feed, and clothe, and educate her. When his own mother dies--leaving two quarters' school-bills unpaid, which you have to settle, by-the-by--the rest of the family, including his own sister, refuse to advance a sixpence to save the child from the workhouse." "I say, Jo, that's putting it a little too strong, my friend! There was no talk of the workhouse." "Let me finish summing up the case. I say they wouldn't spend sixpence to save that child from _starvation_--there, now! When the dowager is dead, and the rest of them button up their breeches' pockets, and the schoolmistress sends away the poor little girl because she can't afford to keep her and teach her for nothing, what does my gentleman do? Does he try in any one way to do his duty by his only child? Not he. He coolly shuffles off all trouble and responsibility on other folks' shoulders. He hasn't taken any notice of you for years, except writing once to borrow fifty pounds----" "Which he didn't get, Jo."