She
tried to picture to herself what her life would have been if she had
grown up on the Mountain, running wild in rags, sleeping on the floor
curled up against her mother, like the pale-faced children huddled
against old Mrs. Hyatt, and turning into a fierce bewildered creature
like the girl who had apostrophized her in such strange words. She was
frightened by the secret affinity she had felt with this girl, and by
the light it threw on her own beginnings. Then she remembered what Mr.
Royall had said in telling her story to Lucius Harney: "Yes, there was
a mother; but she was glad to have the child go. She'd have given her to
anybody...."
Well! after all, was her mother so much to blame? Charity, since that
day, had always thought of her as destitute of all human feeling; now
she seemed merely pitiful. What mother would not want to save her child
from such a life? Charity thought of the future of her own child, and
tears welled into her aching eyes, and ran down over her face. If she
had been less exhausted, less burdened with his weight, she would have
sprung up then and there and fled away.
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