If I could shape ye to my pleasure, I see now I'd make a poor thing of it.

Ye can do better for yourself if--if"-- his square jaw seemed almost to tremble--"if ye'll have a heart in ye, lassie.

Forgive me if I seem to instruct ye, for I've no thought in me now that I could make ye better if I tried." He stopped again, and she saw his weak frame moving nervously; she thought it was for want of breath.
"You're awfully ill, Mr.Bates," she said, in dulness repeating words that she seemed to have got by heart.
Her stupid pity stung him into further speech.
"Oh, lassie, it's not because I'm fond of ye that I say it, for what does it matter about me, but because of all the men in the world that love women.

It's God's voice through them to you; and (although I can't rightly frame it into words) because God set men and women in families, and gave them to have affections, I tell ye the soul in which the pride o' life, or pleasure, or the like o' that, takes the place of the affections is a lost soul." Again his harsh mouth trembled, and the words came with effort.

"Sissy Cameron, ye've not known a mother nor a sister, and your father was hard, and I who loved ye was worse than a brute, and I can't rightly say what I would; but when I'm gone, look round ye; lassie, at the best women ye know that are wives and mothers, and if ye can't greet at the things they greet at, and if ye laugh at things they don't laugh at, and if ye don't fear to do the things they fear, then, even if your cleverness should make ye queen o' the whole world, God pity ye!" "Yes, Mr.Bates," she said, just as she used to when she said the catechism to him and he admonished her.