'I could never abide it, sir, if I took it,' said he; 'and she,--why in
course she would always love it the best.'

In praising his generosity, who can mingle any censure for such
manifest prudence? He would still make her the wife of his bosom,
defiled in the eyes of the world as she had been; but she must be to
him the mother of his own children, not the mother of another's child.

And now again our doctor had a hard task to win through. He saw at
once that it was his duty to use his utmost authority to induce the
poor girl to accept such an offer. She liked the man; and here was
opened to her a course which would have been most desirable, even
before her misfortune. But it is hard to persuade a mother to part
with her first babe; harder, perhaps, when the babe had been so
fathered and so born than when the world has shone brightly on its
earliest hours. She at first refused stoutly: she sent a thousand
loves, a thousand thanks, profusest acknowledgements for his generosity
to the man who showed her that he loved her so well; but Nature, she
said, would not let her leave her child.

'And what will you do for her here, Mary?' said the doctor. Poor Mary
replied to him with a deluge of tears.

'She is my niece,'said the doctor, taking up the tiny infant in his
huge hands; 'she is already the nearest thing, the only thing that I
have in the world. I am her uncle, Mary. If you will go with this man
I will be father to her and mother to her. Of what bread I eat, she
shall eat; of what cup I drink, she shall drink. See, Mary, here is
the Bible;' and he covered the book with his hand, 'Leave her to me,