rushing to the rescue, ready once more to do battle for her, was
seized and held back by Farmer Goodenough. Sarah had sent for him, and
he had come--just in time to frustrate Clare's valour.

The carriage was not yet out of sight, when Farmer Goodenough began to
repent that he had come: his presence was an acknowledgment of
responsibility! Something must be done with the foundling! There was
nobody to claim him, and nobody wanted him! He had always liked the
boy, but he did not want him! His wife was not fond of the boy, nor of
any boy, and did not want him! He had said to her that Clare could not
be left to starve, and she had answered, "Why not?"! What was to be
done with him? Nobody knew--any more than Clare himself. But which of
us knows what is going to be done with him?

Clare was nobody's business. English farmers no more than French are
proverbial for generosity; and Farmer Goodenough, no bad type of his
class, had a wife in whose thoughts not the pence but the farthings
dominated. She was one who at once recoiled and repelled--one of those
whose skin shrinks from the skin of their kind, and who are specially
apt to take unaccountable dislikes--a pitiable human animal of the
leprous sort. She "never took to the foundling," she said. To have
neither father nor mother, she counted disreputable. But I believe the
main source of her dislike to Clare was a feeling of undefined reproof
in the very atmosphere of the boy's presence, his nature was so
different from hers. What urged him toward his fellow-creatures, made
her draw back from him. In truth she hated the boy. The very look of
him made her sick, she said. It was only a certain respect for the
parson, and a certain fear of her husband, who, seldom angry, was yet
capable of fury, that had prevented her from driving the child, "with
his dish-clout face," off the premises, whenever she saw him from door