. Don't shut up your bowels of
compassion against your own flesh and blood. Could you hear these poor
innocent children cry at your door for hunger, and give them no bread?"

"Prithee, what need they cry at our door?" says she. "'Tis the business
of the parish to provide for them; they shan't cry at our door. If they
do, I'll give them nothing." "Won't you?" says he; "but I will. Remember
that dreadful Scripture is directly against us, Prov. xxi. 13, 'Whoso
stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but
shall not be heard.'"

"Well, well," says she, "you must do what you will, because you pretend
to be master; but if I had my will I would send them where they ought to
be sent: I would send them from whence they came."

Then the poor woman put in, and said, "But, madam, that is sending them
to starve indeed, for the parish has no obligation to take care of 'em,
and so they will lie and perish in the street."

"Or be sent back again," says the husband, "to our parish in a
cripple-cart, by the justice's warrant, and so expose us and all the
relations to the last degree among our neighbours, and among those who
know the good old gentleman their grandfather, who lived and flourished
in this parish so many years, and was so well beloved among all people,
and deserved it so well."

"I don't value that one farthing, not I," says the wife; "I'll keep none
of them."

"Well, my dear," says her husband, "but I value it, for I won't have
such a blot lie upon the family, and upon your children; he was a
worthy, ancient, and good man, and his name is respected among all his
neighbours; it will be a reproach to you, that are his daughter, and to
our children, that are his grandchildren, that we should let your
brother's children perish, or come to be a charge to the public, in the
very place where your family once flourished. Come, say no more; I will
see what can be done."

Upon this he sends and gathers all the relations together at a tavern
hard by, and sent for the four little children, that they might see
them; and they all, at first word, agreed to have them taken care of,
and, because his wife was so furious that she would not suffer one of
them to be kept at home, they agreed to keep them all together for a
while; so they committed them to the poor woman that had managed the
affair for them, and entered into obligations to one another to supply
the needful sums for their maintenance; and, not t