Mignon

After the chief had left the room, Bootles continued his breakfast in silence, considering the two suggestions for the disposal of the child.  Now, if the truth be told, Bootles had a horror of workhouses.  He had gone deeply into the “Casual” question, and pitied a tramp from the very inmost recesses of his kind heart.  It fairly made him sick to think of that bonny golden head growing up among the shorn and unlovely locks of a pauper brood—to think of the little soft fingers that had twined themselves so confidently about his own, and had picked at the embroideries of his mess waistcoat, being slapped by the matron, or set as soon as they should be strong enough to do coarse and hard work, to develop into the unnaturally widened and unkempt hand of a “Marchioness”—to think of that little dainty thing being nourished on skilly, or on whatever hard fare pauper children are fed—to think of that little aristocrat being brought up among the children of thieves and vagabonds!