First Impressions

'I am surprised at you, Margaret,' said her mother. 'You who were
always accusing people of being shoppy at Helstone! I don't I
think, Mr. Hale, you have done quite right in introducing such a
person to us without telling us what he had been. I really was
very much afraid of showing him how much shocked I was at some
parts of what he said. His father "dying in miserable
circumstances." Why it might have been in the workhouse.'

'I am not sure if it was not worse than being in the workhouse,'
replied her husband. 'I heard a good deal of his previous life
from Mr. Bell before we came here; and as he has told you a part,
I will fill up what he left out. His father speculated wildly,
failed, and then killed himself, because he could not bear the
disgrace. All his former friends shrunk from the disclosures that
had to be made of his dishonest gambling--wild, hopeless
struggles, made with other people's money, to regain his own
moderate portion of wealth. No one came forwards to help the
mother and this boy. There was another child, I believe, a girl;
too young to earn money, but of course she had to be kept. At
least, no friend came forwards immediately, and Mrs. Thornton is
not one, I fancy, to wait till tardy kindness comes to find her
out. So they left Milton. I knew he had gone into a shop, and
that his earnings, with some fragment of property secured to his
mother, had been made to keep them for a long time. Mr. Bell said
they absolutely lived upon water-porridge for years--how, he did
not know; but long after the creditors had given up hope of any
payment of old Mr. Thornton's debts (if, indeed, they ever had
hoped at all about it, after his suicide,) this young man
returned to Milton, and went quietly round to each creditor,
paying him the first instalment of the money owing to him. No
noise--no gathering together of creditors--it was done very
silently and quietly, but all was paid at last; helped on
materially by the circumstance of one of the creditors, a crabbed
old fellow (Mr. Bell says), taking in Mr. Thornton as a kind of
partner.' 'That really is fine,' said Margaret. 'What a pity such a nature
should be tainted by his position as a Milton manufacturer.'