But she who gives her child all he desires, in the hope of thus binding his love to herself, no less than she who thwarts him in everything, may rest assured of the neglect she has richly earned.

When she heard of his death, she howled and cursed her fate, and the woman, meaning poor Letty, who had parted her and her Tom, swearing she would never set eyes upon her, never let her touch a farthing of Tom's money.
She would not hear of paying his debts until Mary told her she then would, upon which the fear of public disapprobation wrought for right if not righteousness.
But what was Mary to do now with Letty?
She was little more than a baby yet, not silly from youth, but young from silliness.

Children must learn to walk, but not by being turned out alone in Cheapside.
She was relieved from some perplexity for the present, however, by the arrival of a letter from Mrs.Wardour to Letty, written in a tone of stiffly condescendent compassion--not so unpleasant to Letty as to her friend, because from childhood she had been used to the nature that produced it, and had her mind full of a vast, undefined notion of the superiority of the writer.

It may be a question whether those who fill our inexperienced minds with false notions of their greatness, do us thereby more harm or good; certainly when one comes to understand with what an arrogance and self-assertion they have done so, putting into us as reverence that which in them is conceit, one is ready to be scornful more than enough; but, rather than have a child question such claims, I would have him respect the meanest soul that ever demanded respect; the first shall be last in good time, and the power of revering come forth uninjured; whereas a child judging his elders has already withered the blossom of his being.
But Mrs.Wardour's letter was kind-perhaps a little repentant; it is hard to say, for ten persons will repent of a sin for one who will confess it--I do not mean to the priest--that may be an easy matter, but to the only one who has a claim to the confession, namely, the person wronged.

Yet such confession is in truth far more needful to the wronger than to the wronged; it is a small thing to be wronged, but a horrible thing to wrong.
The letter contained a poverty-stricken expression of sympathy, and an invitation to spend the summer months with them at her old home.