I even told her plainly that if she once got into
mischief, it would then be too late to reclaim her; and she answered in
her reckless, sluttish way, that if she ever did get into mischief it
would be nothing but my aggravation that would drive her to it; and
that she believed her father's kindness would never find it too late to
reclaim her again. This is only one specimen of the usual insolence and
wickedness of all her replies to me."
(As he finished this paragraph, Mat dashed the letter down angrily on
his knee, and cursed the writer of it with some of those gold-digger's
imprecations which it had been his misfortune to hear but too often in
the past days of his Californian wanderings. It was evidently only by
placing considerable constraint upon himself, that he now refrained
from crumpling up the letter and throwing it from him in disgust.
However, he spread it out flat before him once more--looked first at
one paragraph, then at another, but did not read them; hesitated--and
then irritably turned over the leaf of paper before him, and began at a
new page.)
"When I told Joshua generally what I had observed, and particularly
what I myself had seen and heard on the evening in question, he seemed
at last a little staggered, and sent for my niece, to insist on an
explanation.
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