Dear Godfrey, don't ask me to do
what I know is wrong: I should never be happy again. I know it's
very hard for you- it's easier for me- but it's the will of
Providence.'
It might seem singular that Nancy- with her religious theory pieced
together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine
imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small
experience- should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so
nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in
the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge- singular, if we
did not know that human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude
the barriers of system.
Godfrey had from the first specified Eppie, then about twelve years
old, as a child suitable for them to adopt. It had never occurred to
him that Silas would rather part with his life than with Eppie. Surely
the weaver would wish the best to the child he had taken so much
trouble with, and would be glad that such good fortune should happen
to her: she would always be very grateful to him, and he would be well
provided for to the end of his life- provided for as the excellent
part he had done by the child deserved. Was it not an appropriate
thing for people in a higher station to take a charge off the hands of
a man in a lower? It seemed an eminently appropriate thing to Godfrey,
for reasons that were known only to himself; and by a common
fallacy, he imagined the measure would be easy because he had
private motives for desiring it.
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