Friends were called in--the interference, the supplications, of the Clapham clergy, some of whom dined constantly at the Hermitage, prevailed to allay this domestic quarrel; and no doubt the good sense of Mrs.Newcome--who, though imperious, was yet not unkind; and who, excellent as she was, yet could be brought to own that she was sometimes in fault--induced her to make at least a temporary submission to the man whom she had placed at the head of her house, and whom it must be confessed she had vowed to love and honour.

When Tommy fell ill of the scarlet fever, which afflicting event occurred presently after the above dispute, his own nurse, Sarah, could not have been more tender, watchful, and affectionate than his stepmother showed herself to be.
She nursed him through his illness; allowed his food and medicine to be administered by no other hand; sat up with the boy through a night of his fever, and uttered not one single reproach to her husband (who watched with her) when the twins took the disease (from which we need not say they happily recovered); and though young Tommy, in his temporary delirium, mistaking her for Nurse Sarah, addressed her as his dear Fat Sally--whereas no whipping-post to which she ever would have tied him could have been leaner than Mrs.Newcome--and, under this feverish delusion, actually abused her to her face; calling her an old cat, an old Methodist, and, jumping up in his little bed, forgetful of his previous fancy, vowing that he would put on his clothes and run away to Sally.

Sally was at her northern home by this time, with a liberal pension which Mr.Newcome gave her, and which his son and his son's son after him, through all their difficulties and distresses, always found means to pay.
What the boy threatened in his delirium he had thought of, no doubt, more than once in his solitary and unhappy holidays.

A year after he actually ran away, not from school, but from home; and appeared one morning, gaunt and hungry, at Sarah's cottage two hundred miles away from Clapham, who housed the poor prodigal, and killed her calf for him--washed him, with many tears and kisses, and put him to bed and to sleep; from which slumber he was aroused by the appearance of his father, whose sure instinct, backed by Mrs.Newcome's own quick intelligence, had made him at once aware whither the young runaway had fled.

The poor father came horsewhip in hand--he knew of no other law or means to maintain his authority; many and many a time had his own father, the old weaver, whose memory he loved and honoured, strapped and beaten him.