"A cow
is less than a boy, and it might cost the world a man if I sent Harry away
in a fit of displeasure, disgraced by my discharge so that he could not
find another place in town to work for his board, and go to school.
Besides, Brindle will die anyway, and discharging the boy will not save
her."
"No, of course not. But it was your taking the boy in, a penniless, unknown
fellow, that has cost you a cow," persisted the wife. "I told you at the
time you would be sorry for it."
"I have not intimated that I am sorry I took the boy in," remarked the
doctor, not perversely, but with steadfast kindness. "If our own little boy
had lived, and had done this thing accidentally, would I have been sorry he
had ever been born? Or if little Ted had grown to be thirteen, and you and
I had died in the wilderness of poverty, leaving him to wander out of the
city to seek for a home in God's fair country, where his little peaked face
could fill out and grow rosy, as Harry's has, would you think it just to
have him sent away because he had made a boyish mistake? Of course you
would not, mother. Your heart is in the right place, even if it does get
covered up sometimes.
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