Her precocity was of a very unpleasant order, and caused her father a great deal of annoyance.
When everything else failed him, Sam had the baby for consolation.

The little wretch had been so utterly uncared for since its appearance that it seemed surprised for some time by its father's demonstrations of affection, but finally the meaning of this seemed made known to it, probably in the way the same meanings are translated to babies everywhere else, and from being a forlorn and fretful child it gradually became so cheerful that its own mother began to display some interest in it and make a plaything of it, to her own manifest advantage.
But Jane, the elder daughter, who was a woman in stature and already knew more of the world than is good for women in general, was a constant source of anxiety to Sam.

Many a night the unhappy father lingered in the neighborhood of the hotel, seeking for an opportunity to see his daughter and talk with her; not that he had much to say, but that he hoped by his presence to keep more congenial company away from her.

When he heard any village gossip in the house, he always could trace it to his daughter Jane.

Whenever Mary broke out with some new and wild expression of longing, he understood who put it into her mind.
Whenever his wife complained that she was not so well dressed as some other women whose husbands were plain workmen, and expressed a wish for some tawdry bit of finery, Sam could trace the desire, by very little questioning, back to his daughter Jane.
He prayed about it, thought about it, groaned over it, wept over it, and still saw no means within his power to bring the girl back to an interest in her family and to bring her up so that she should not disgrace the name which he was trying to rehabilitate.