But on one occasion, when Arthur had been behaving particularly ill, and Mr.
Huntingdon and his guests had been particularly provoking and insulting to me in their encouragement of him, and I particularly anxious to get him out of the room, and on the very point of demeaning myself by a burst of uncontrollable passion--Mr.Hargrave suddenly rose from his seat with an aspect of stern determination, lifted the child from his father's knee, where he was sitting half-tipsy, cocking his head and laughing at me, and execrating me with words he little knew the meaning of, handed him out of the room, and, setting him down in the hall, held the door open for me, gravely bowed as I withdrew, and closed it after me.

I heard high words exchanged between him and his already half-inebriated host as I departed, leading away my bewildered and disconcerted boy.
But this should not continue: my child must not be abandoned to this corruption: better far that he should live in poverty and obscurity, with a fugitive mother, than in luxury and affluence with such a father.
These guests might not be with us long, but they would return again: and he, the most injurious of the whole, his child's worst enemy, would still remain.

I could endure it for myself, but for my son it must be borne no longer: the world's opinion and the feelings of my friends must be alike unheeded here, at least--alike unable to deter me from my duty.

But where should I find an asylum, and how obtain subsistence for us both?
Oh, I would take my precious charge at early dawn, take the coach to M--, flee to the port of -- , cross the Atlantic, and seek a quiet, humble home in New England, where I would support myself and him by the labour of my hands.

The palette and the easel, my darling playmates once, must be my sober toil-fellows now.