Chapter 31

AN ACCIDENT TO THE DOVER COACH.

While Mr. Benson lay awake for fear of oversleeping himself, and so being late at Mr. Farquhar's (it was somewhere about six o'clock--dark as an October morning is at that time), Sally came to his door and knocked. She was always an early riser; and if she had not been gone to bed long before Mr. Bradshaw's visit last night, Mr. Benson might safely have trusted to her calling him.

"Here's a woman down below as must see you directly. She'll be upstairs after me if you're not down quick."

"Is it any one from Clarke's?"

"No, no! not it, master," said she through the keyhole; "I reckon it's Mrs. Bradshaw, for all she's muffled up."

He needed no other word. When he went down, Mrs. Bradshaw sat in his easy-chair, swaying her body to and fro, and crying without restraint. Mr. Benson came up to her, before she was aware that he was there.

"Oh! sir," said she, getting up and taking hold of both his hands, "you won't be so cruel, will you? I have got some money somewhere--some money my father settled on me, sir; I don't know how much, but I think it's more than two thousand pounds, and you shall have it all. If I can't give it you now, I'll make a will, sir. Only be merciful to poor Dick--don't go and prosecute him, sir."

"My dear Mrs. Bradshaw, don't you agitate yourself in this way. I never meant to prosecute him."

"But Mr. Bradshaw says that you must."

"I shall not, indeed. I have told Mr. Bradshaw so."

"Has he been here? Oh! is not he cruel? I don't care. I have been a good wife till now. I know I have. I have done all he bid me, ever since we were married. But now I will speak my mind, and say to everybody how cruel he is--how hard to his own flesh and blood! If he puts poor Dick in prison, I will go too. If I'm to choose between my husband and my son, I choose my son; for he will have no friends, unless I am with him."

"Mr. Bradshaw will think better of it. You will see that, when his first anger and disappointment are over, he will not be hard or cruel."

"You don't know Mr. Bradshaw," said she mournfully, "if you think he'll change. I might beg and beg--I have done many a time, when we had little children, and I wanted to save them a whipping--but no begging ever did any good. At last I left it off. He'll not change."

"Perhaps not for human entreaty. Mrs. Bradshaw, is there nothing more powerful?"

The tone of his voice suggested what he did not say.

"If you mean that God may soften his heart," replied she humbly, "I'm not going to deny God's power--I have need to think of Him," she continued, bursting into fresh tears, "for I am a very miserable woman. Only think! he cast it up against me last