I have said that she had one son. He was the child of her old age; but
could hardly be called the comfort--for, of all unlucky urchins, Dolph
Heyliger was the most mischievous. Not that the whipster was really
vicious; he was only full of fun and frolic, and had that daring,
gamesome spirit, which is extolled in a rich man's child, but
execrated in a poor man's. He was continually getting into scrapes:
his mother was incessantly harassed with complaints of some waggish
pranks which he had played off; bills were sent in for windows that he
had broken; in a word, he had not reached his fourteenth year before
he was pronounced, by all the neighbourhood, to be a "wicked dog, the
wickedest dog in the street!" Nay, one old gentleman, in a
claret-coloured coat, with a thin red face, and ferret eyes, went so
far as to assure Dame Heyliger, that her son would, one day or other,
come to the gallows!
Yet, notwithstanding all this, the poor old soul loved her boy. It
seemed as though she loved him the better, the worse he behaved; and
that he grew more in her favour, the more he grew out of favour with
the world. Mothers are foolish, fond-hearted beings; there's no
reasoning them out of their dotage; and, indeed, this poor woman's
child was all that was left to love her in this world;--so we must not
think it hard that she turned a deaf ear to her good friends, who
sought to prove to her that Dolph would come to a halter.
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