Emma was
quite good so long as she was left alone. She could walk quite
straight so long as there were no stones in the way and nobody to pull
her aside. If there were stones, she instantly stumbled; if somebody
pulled, she instantly went. She was weak, amiable, well-intentioned.
She had a widowed father who was unpleasant and who sometimes beat her
on Saturday nights, and on Sunday mornings sometimes, if the fumes of
the Cock and Hens still hung about him, threw things at her before she
went to church. A widowed father in Emma's class is an ill being to
live with. The vicar did his best to comfort her. Mrs. Morrison talked
of the commandments and of honouring one's father and mother and of
how the less there was to honour the greater the glory of doing it;
and Emma was so amiable that she actually did manage to honour him six
days out of the seven. At the same time she could not help thinking it
would be nice to go away to a place where he wasn't. They were
extremely poor; almost the poorest family in the village, and the
vision of possessing ten shillings of her very own was a dizzy one.
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