The String of Pearls; or, The Barber of Fleet Street — page 150: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ae OF PEARLS. suffered one-tenth part of the cruelty and oppression that I have suffered, you | are indeed to be pitied.” ee Tf we are to stay here,’’ said Tobias, “till night, before making any attempt to escape, it will, perhaps, ease your mind, and beguile the time, if you were to tell me how you came here.” “God knows! it might—it might.”’ Tobias was very urgent upon the poor creature to tell her story, to beguile the tedium of the time of waiting, and after some amount of persuasion she con- sented to do so. ‘You shall now hear,’’ she said to Tobias, ‘‘if you will listen, such a cata- logue of wrongs, unredressed and still enduring, that would indeed drive any human being mad; but I have been able to preserve so much of my mental faculties as will enable me to recollect and understand the many acts of cruelty and injustice that | have endured here for many a long and weary day. My || persecutions began when I was very young—so young that I could not com. prehend their cause, and used to wonder why I should be treated with greater rigour or with greater cruelty than people used to treat those who were really disobedient and wayward children, I was scarcely seven years old when a maiden aunt died; she was the old person whom 1 remember as having been uniformly kind to me; though I can only remember her indistinctly, yet I know she was kind to me; I know also I, used to visit her, and she used to look upon me as her favourite, for I used to sit az her feet upon a stool, watching her as she sat amusing herself by embroidering, silent and motionless sometimes, and then I asked her some questions which she answered. This is the chief feature of my recollection of my aunt: she soon after died, but while she lived, I had no unkindness from anybody; it was only after that that I felt the cruelty and coolness of my family. It appeared that I was a favourite with my aunt above all others, either in our family or any other; she loved me, and promised that when she died, she would leave me provided for, and that I should not be dependent upon any one. Well, 1 was, from the day after the funeral, an altered being. I was neglectea, and no one paid any attention to me whatso- ever; | was thrust about, and nobody appeared to care even if I had the necessaries of life. Such achange [ could not understand. I could not believe the evidence of my own senses; I thought it must be something that I did not understand; perhaps my poor aunt’s death had _ caused this distress and altera- tion in people’s demeanour tome. However, I was a child, and though | was quick enough at noting all this, yet l was too young to feel acutely the conduct of my friends. My father and mother were careless of me, and let me run where I would; they cared not when | was hurt, they cared not when I was in danger. Come what would, I was left to take my chance. I recollect one day when [ had fallen from the top to the bottom of some stairs and hurt myself very much; but no one comforted me; I was thrust out of the drawing-room, because I cried. I then went to the top of the stairs, where I sat weeping bitterly for some time, At length, an old servant came out of one of the attics, and salid— «« Oh! Miss Mary, what has happened to you, that you sit crying so bitterly || on the stair head? Come in here ?’ | | ‘*{T arose and went into the attic with her, when she set me on a chair, and busied herself with my bruises, and said to me— «*¢ Now, tell me what are you crying about, and why did they turn you out of the drawing-room—tell me now ?’ | «<< Ay,’ said I, ‘they turned me out because I cried when I was hurt. TI fell all the way down stairs, but they don’t mind.’ “** No, they do not, and yet.in many families they would have taken more care of you than they do here ?’ «<* And why do you think they would have done so,’ I inquired? «€ Don’t you know what good fortune has lately fallen into your lap? I thought || you knew all about it.’ ne cre ? nt i J OO a a comicbooks.com