"Don't ask me to do that! Anything else to prove my gratitude for your kindness to us; but how can I part from my own little Mary?
You can't have the heart to ask it of me!" "I have the heart, Mrs.Peckover, to feel deeply for your distress at the idea of parting from the child; but, for her sake, I must again ask you to control your feelings.

And, more than that, I must appeal to you by your love to her, to grant a fair hearing to the petition which I now make on Mr.Blyth's behalf." "I would, indeed, if I could, sir,--but it's just because I love her so, that I can't! Besides, as you yourself said, he's a perfect stranger." "I readily admit the force of that objection on your part, Mrs.
Peckover; but let me remind you, that I vouch for the uprightness of his character, and his fitness to be trusted with the child, after twenty years' experience of him.

You may answer to that, that I am a stranger, too; and I can only ask you, in return, frankly to accept my character and position as the best proofs I can offer you that I am not unworthy of your confidence.

If you placed little Mary for instruction (as you well might) in an asylum for the deaf and dumb, you would be obliged to put implicit trust in the authorities of that asylum, on much the same grounds as those I now advance to justify you in putting trust in me." "Oh, sir! don't think--pray don't think I am unwilling to trust you--so kind and good as you have been to us to-day--and a clergyman too--I should be ashamed of myself, if I could doubt--" "Let me tell you, plainly and candidly, what advantages to the child Mr.
Blyth's proposal holds out.

He has no family of his own, and his wife is, as he has hinted to you, an invalid for life.