She affected to believe the suggestions of his pretended hope; she interchanged with him assurances of better fortune; her appearance exhibited a calm, while her heart was torn with anguish.

She assisted him in writing letters to former friends, the last consolation of the wretched prisoner; she delivered these letters with her own hand, and underwent a thousand mortifying repulses, the most shocking circumstances of which she concealed from her husband.

She performed all the menial offices in her own little family, which was maintained by pawning her apparel; and both the husband and wife, in some measure, sweetened their cares by prattling and toying with their charming little boy, on whom they doated with an enthusiasm of fondness.

Yet even this pleasure was mingled with the most tender and melancholy regret.

I have seen the mother hang over him, with the most affecting expression of this kind in her aspect, the tears contending with the smiles upon her countenance, while she exclaimed, 'Alas! my poor prisoner, little did your mother once think she should be obliged to nurse you in a jail.' The captain's paternal love was dashed with impatience; he would snatch up the boy in a transport of grief, press him to his breast, devour him as it were with kisses, throw up his eyes to heaven in the most emphatic silence, then convey the child hastily to his mother's arms, pull his hat over his eyes, stalk out into the common walk, and, finding himself alone, break out into tears and lamentation.
"Ah! little did this unhappy couple know what further griefs awaited them! The smallpox broke out in the prison, and poor Tommy Clewline was infected.