“Well, I’ll just about have to face ’em, that’s all.  I done wrong, and I don’t ask not to be punished.”

“You’re an absolute fool.  And if you won’t do anything for your own sake, you might at least do something for mine.  I tell you, I’m not like you—­I do think of other people—­and for Tip’s sake I can’t have everyone talking about you, and may be my own story raked up again.  I won’t have him punished for his goodness.  If you won’t marry and be respectable, I tell you, you needn’t think I’ll ever let you see me again.”

“But, Ellen, supposing even there is talk—­you and Tip won’t be here to hear it.  You’ll be married by then and away in Wiltshire.  Tip need never know.”

“How can he help knowing, as long as you’ve got a tongue in your head?  And what’ll he think you’re doing at Chichester?—­No, I tell you, Joanna, unless you marry Hill, you can say good-bye to me”—­she was speaking quite calmly now—­“I don’t want to be hard and unsisterly, but I happen to love the man who’s going to be my husband better than anyone in the world.  He’s been good, and I’m not going to have his goodness put upon.  He’s marrying a woman who’s had trouble and scandal in her life, but at least he’s not going to have the shame of that woman’s sister.  So you can choose between me and yourself.”

“It ain’t between you and myself.  It’s between you and my child.  It’s for my child’s sake I won’t marry Bertie Hill.”

“My dear Joanna, are you quite an ass?  Can’t you see that the person who will suffer most for all this is your child?  I didn’t bring in that argument before, as I didn’t think it would appeal to you—­but surely you see that the position of an illegitimate child ...”

“Is much better than the child of folk who don’t love each other, and have only married because it was coming.  I’m scared myself, and I can scare Bert, and we can get married—­but what’ll that be?  He don’t love me—­I don’t love him.  He don’t want to marry me—­I don’t want to marry him.  He’ll never forgive me, and all our lives he’ll be throwing it up to me—­and he’ll be hating the child, seeing as it’s only because of it we’re married, and he’ll make it miserable.  Oh, you don’t know Bertie as I know him—­I don’t say as it’s all his fault, poor boy, I reckon his mother didn’t raise him properly—­but you should hear him speak to his mother and sister, and know what he’d be as a husband and father.  I tell you, he ain’t fit to be the father of a child.”

“And are you fit to be the mother?” Ellen sneered.

“Maybe I ain’t.  But the point is, I am the mother, nothing can change that.  And reckon I can fight, and keep the worst off.  Oh, I know it ain’t easy, and it ain’t right; and I’ll suffer for it, and the worst till be that my child ull have to suffer too.  But I tell you it shan’t suffer more than I can help.  Reckon I shan’t manage so badly.  I’ll raise it among strangers, and I’ll have a nice little bit of money to live on, coming to me from the farm, even when I’ve paid you a share, as I shall, as is fitting.  I’ll give my child every chance I can.”