She would
take other boarders, but public opinion is against her on all sides.
It's against me too. But for love we would have separated long ago."
Podge's tears came.
"What right had you," exclaimed Duff Salter, rather angrily, "to
maintain a whole family on the servitude of your young body, wearing its
roundness down to bone, exciting your nervous system, and inviting
premature age upon a nature created for a longer girlhood, and for the
solace of love?"
She did not feel the anger in his tones; it seemed like protection, for
which she had hungered.
"Why, sir, all women must support their poor kin."
"Men don't do it!" exclaimed Duff Salter, pushing aside his gray apron
of beard to see her more distinctly. "Did that brother who rushed in
vicious precocity to maintain another and a wicked woman ever think of
relieving you from hard labor?"
"He never could be anything less to me than brother!" exclaimed Podge;
"but, Mr. Salter, if that was only all I had to trouble me! Oh, sir,
work is occupation, but work harassed with care for others becomes
unreal. I cannot sleep, thinking for Agnes. I cannot teach, my head
throbs so. That river, so cold and impure, going along by the wharves,
seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now.
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