the thing was too confoundedly awkward--too embarrassing altogether."

"But she writes--she writes continually. Tells me what he
weighs, and when he's got a fresh tooth, and how he crawls about the
carpet and into her bed of a morning, and imitates the cat mewing, and
drinks I don't know how many pints of new milk a day, and all that sort
of thing. I believe the rascal has the appetite of a young tiger--and
yet I can't pay for what he eats! The nurse was long ago dispensed
with, so that I've not even her board to send a cheque for, that they
might by chance make a trifle of profit out of. It seems too late now
to simply take the child away, and there leave it. I haven't the shabby
courage to do such a thing; and besides, he might come to any sort of
grief, poor little chap, in that case. There's no doubt in the world
that her taking of him and doing for him have been the salvation of his
health, and perhaps his life. And I know, by what she tells me, that he
regularly dotes on her--as so he ought--and would howl his very head
off if I took him from her. What could I do with him if I did take him?
I've no home, and nobody to look after it if I had; and hired servants
are the deuce with a lone man at their mercy. It would be worse now
than it was at first. And so'--with another heavy sigh--'you see the
situation. I'm just swallowed up, body and bones, drowned fathoms deep
in a sea of debt and obligation that I can never by any possibility
struggle out of, except--"

"Except," continued Alice, with the candid air of a kind and sensible
sister--"except by marrying her, you mean? Yes, I see the situation. I
appreciate your point of view. I should understand it if it were not
that she unquestionably laid the trap for you deliberately--just as
that spider laid his for moths and flies. And marriage by capture has
gone out."