To defend himself from admiring, he condemned the two women for the risk they ran to save a probably broken-legged little beast: and he escaped the melting mood by forcing a sneer at the sort of stuff out of which popular ballads are woven.

Carinthia was accused of letting her adventurous impulses and sentimental female compassion swamp thought of a mother's duties.

If both those women had broken their legs the child might have cried itself into fits for the mother, there she would have remained.
Gower wrote in a language transparent of the act, addressed to a reader whose memory was to be impregnated.

His reader would have flown away from the simple occurrence on arabesques and modulated tones; and then envisaging them critically, would have tossed his poor little story to the winds, as a small thing magnified: with an object, being the next thought about it.

He knew his Fleetwood so far.
His letter concluded: 'I am in a small Surrey village over a baker's shop, rent eight shillings per week, a dame's infant school opposite my window, miles of firwood, heath, and bracken openings, for the winged or the nested fancies.