her life. She agreed with the easy philosophy of the bailiff, already recorded in these pages: “They’re only children. There’s no call, poor things, to part them yet a while.”
There was one member of the family, however, who took a sensible and serious view of the matter.
My father’s brother paid us a visit in our solitude; discovered what was going on between Mary and me; and was, at first, naturally enough, inclined to laugh at us. Closer investigation altered his way of thinking. He became convinced that my mother was acting like a fool; that the bailiff (a faithful servant, if ever there was one yet) was cunningly advancing his own interests by means of his daughter; and that I was a young idiot, who had developed his native reserves of imbecility at an unusually early period of life. Speaking to my mother under the influence of these strong impressions, my uncle offered to take me back with him to London, and keep me there until I had been brought to my senses by association with his own children, and by careful superintendence under his own roof.
My mother hesitated about accepting this proposal; she had the advantage over my uncle of understanding my disposition. While she was still doubting, while my uncle was still impatiently waiting for her decision, I settled the question for my elders by running away.
I left a letter to represent me in my absence; declaring that no mortal power should part me from Mary, and promising to return and ask my mother’s pardon as soon as my uncle had left the house. The strictest search was made for me without discovering a trace of my place of refuge. My uncle departed for London, predicting that I should live to be a disgrace to the family, and announcing that he should transmit his opinion of me to my father in America by the next mail.
The secret of the hiding-place in which I contrived to defy discovery is soon told. I was hidden (without the bailiff’s knowledge) in the bedroom of the bailiff’s mother. And did the bailiff’s mother know it? you will ask. To which I answer: the bailiff’s mother did it. And, what is more, gloried in doing it—not, observe, as an act of hostility to my relatives, but simply as a duty that lay on her conscience.
What sort of old woman, in the name
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