While I lived with him, I had it for asking; and
fifty pounds would, I thought, go a long way. So I went back to
Chester, where I'd been so happy, and set up a small-ware shop, and
hired a room near. We should have done well, but alas! alas! my
little girl fell ill, and I could not mind my shop and her too:
and things grew worse and worse. I sold my goods anyhow to get
money to buy her food and medicine; I wrote over and over again to
her father for help, but he must have changed his quarters, for I
never got an answer. The landlord seized the few bobbins and tapes
I had left, for shop-rent; and the person to whom the mean little
room, to which we had been forced to remove, belonged, threatened to
turn us out unless his rent was paid; it had run on many weeks, and
it was winter, cold bleak winter; and my child was so ill, so ill,
and I was starving. And I could not bear to see her suffer, and
forgot how much better it would be for us to die together;--oh, her
moans, her moans, which money could give the means of relieving! So
I went out into the street one January night--Do you think God will
punish me for that?" she asked with wild vehemence, almost amounting
to insanity, and shaking Jem's arm in order to force an answer from
him.
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