It seems as if there were circumstances when pity to some, to one, was wicked injustice to others: as if there were times when it is right and needful to lop off, at once and forever, a rotten branch rather than let the whole tree go to rack and ruin.

I would do it! I should think myself justified in doing it." "But not just yet.

He is only a boy--our own boy." And the two women, in both of whom the maternal passion existed strong and deep, yet in the one never had found, and in the other never might find, its natural channel, wept together over this lad, almost as mothers weep.
"But what can we do ?" said Hilary at last.
"Thirty pounds, and not a halfpenny to pay it with; must we borrow ?" "Oh no--no," was the answer, with a shrinking gesture; "no borrowing.
There is the diamond ring." This was a sort of heir-loom from eldest daughter to eldest daughter of the Leaf family which had been kept even as a sort of superstition, through all temptations of poverty .-- The last time Miss Leaf looked at it she had remarked, jestingly, it should be given some day to that important personage talked of for many a year among the three aunts--Mrs.Ascott Leaf.
"Who must do without it now," said Johanna, looking regretfully at the ring; "that is, if he ever takes to himself a wife, poor boy." Hilary answered, beneath her breath, "Unless he alters, I earnestly hope he never may." And there came over her involuntarily a wild, despairing thought, Would it not be better that neither Ascott nor herself should ever be married, that the family might die out, and trouble the world no more?
Nevertheless she rose up to do what she knew had to be done, and what there was nobody to do but herself.
"Don't mind it, Johanna; for indeed I do not.

I shall go to a first rate, respectable jeweler, and he will not cheat me; and then I shall find my way to the sponging-house--isn't that what they call it?
I dare say many a poor woman has been there before me.

I am not the first, and shall not be the last, and no body will harm me.