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There was a long and animated discussion, during which the boy and his friends were bidden to retire. It was contended that the marriage of the boy’s parents was not proven—that his very name was dubious,—and that the founder’s will was specific on that head.

Then one of Mrs. Clough’s friends rose and grew eloquent. He asked if they were to interpret the will of the great and benevolent man, whose portrait looked down upon them, by the spirit or by the letter? If they themselves did not feel that the boy was eligible, as the nurse’s testimony went to prove? That this was a case peculiarly marked out for their charitable construction. And he wound up by inquiring if they thought Humphrey Chetham would expect his representatives to be less humane, less charitable, less conscientious in dealing with a bounty not their own, than that poor struggling, hardworking tanner and his daughter, who had maintained and cherished the orphan in spite of cruelly hard times, and still more cruel slander. And then he told, as an episode, what Sally Cooper had confessed, and how and why Bess had lost her lover.