"It is I who have been
rough and brutal. Poverty tried us too hard; but we were not like the
rest of them--we were always faithful to the altar. And the Almighty has
seen us, though we often doubted it."
"I never doubted that, James."
So then the poor things fell on their knees upon the public road, and
thanked God. If any man had seen them, he would have said they were mad.
Yet madder things are done every day by gentlemen with faces as grave as
the parish bull's. And then they rose and formed their little plans.
Triplet was for devoting four-fifths to charity, and living like a prince
on the remainder. But Mrs. Triplet thought the poor were entitled to no
more than two-thirds, and they themselves ought to bask in a third, to
make up for what they had gone through; and then suddenly she sighed, and
burst into tears. "Lucy! Lucy!" sobbed she.
Yes, reader, God had taken little Lucy! And her mother cried to think all
this wealth and comfort had come too late for her darling child.
"Do not cry. Lucy is richer, a thousand times, than you are, with your
twenty thousand pounds."
Their good resolutions were carried out, for a wonder. Triplet lived for
years, the benefactor of all the loose fish that swim in and round
theaters; and, indeed, the unfortunate seldom appealed to him in vain. He
now predominated over the arts, instead of climbing them.
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