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212520_The_Adve ... _Way_Through_The_World.pdf - OUDL Home

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614 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP<br />

large medallion of the deceased General on her neck. She wept<br />

dry tears over that interesting cameo at frequent tea-parties. She<br />

never could forgive Philip for taking away her child from her, and<br />

if any one would take away others of her girls, she would be equally<br />

unforgiving. Endowed with that wonderful logic with which<br />

women are blessed, I believe she never admitted, or has been able<br />

to admit to her own mind, that she did Philip or her daughter a<br />

wrong. In the tea-parties of her acquaintance she groaned over<br />

the extravagance of her son-in-law and his brutal treatment of her<br />

blessed child. Many good people agreed with her and shook their<br />

respectable noddles when the name of that prodigal Philip was<br />

mentioned over her muffins and Bohea. He was prayed for; his<br />

dear widowed mother-in-law was pitied, and blessed with all the<br />

comfort reverend gentlemen could supply on the spot. " Upon my<br />

honour, Firmin, Emily and I were made to believe that you were a<br />

monster, sir," the stout Major MacWhirter once said ; "and now I<br />

have heard your story, by Jove, I think it is you, and not Eliza<br />

Baynes, who were wronged. She has a deuce of a tongue, Eliza<br />

has : and a temper —poor Charles knew what that was !" In fine,<br />

when Philip, reduced to his last guinea, asked Charlotte's mother<br />

to pay her debt to her sick daughter, Mrs. General B. sent Philip a<br />

ten-pound note, open, by Captain Swang, of the Indian army, who<br />

happened to be coming to England. And that, Philip says, of all<br />

the hard knocks of fate, has been the very hardest which he has<br />

had to endure.<br />

But the poor little wife knew nothing of this cruelty, nor, indeed,<br />

of the very poverty which was hemming round her curtain : and in<br />

the midst of his griefs, Philip Firmin was immensely consoled by<br />

the tender fidelity of the friends whom God had sent him. <strong>The</strong>ir<br />

griefs were drawing to an end now. Kind readers all, may your<br />

sorrows, may mine, leave us with hearts not embittered, and<br />

humbly acquiescent to the Great Will !

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