“My own boy! She threatened me that if I resisted her, I should be brought by constables, and it was better to come quietly than make that stir in such a – ” Mrs. Pegler glanced timidly but proudly round the walls – “such a fine house as this. Indeed, indeed, it is not my fault! My dear, noble, stately boy! I have always lived quiet and secret, Josiah, my dear. I have never broken the condition once. I have never said I was your mother. I have admired you at a distance; and if I have come to town sometimes, with long times between, to take a proud peep at you, I have done it unbeknown, my love, and gone away again.”
Mr. Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets, walked in impatient mortification up and down at the side of the long dining-table, while the spectators greedily took in every syllable of Mrs. Pegler’s appeal, and each succeeding syllable became more and more round-eyed. Mr. Bounderby still walking up and down, when Mrs. Pegler had done, Mr. Gradgrind addressed that maligned old lady:
“I am surprised, madam,” he observed with severity, “that in your old age you have the face to claim Mr. Bounderby for your son, after your unnatural and inhuman treatment of him.”
“Me unnatural!” cried poor old Mrs. Pegler. “Me inhuman! To my dear boy?”
“Dear!” repeated Mr. Gradgrind. “Yes; dear in his self-made prosperity, madam, I dare say. Not very dear, however, when you deserted him in his infancy, and left him to the brutality of a drunken grandmother.”
“I deserted my Josiah!” cried Mrs. Pegler, clasping her hands. “Now, Lord forgive you, sir, for your wicked imaginations, and for your scandal against the memory of my poor mother, who died in my arms before Josiah was born. May you repent of it, sir, and live to know better!”
She was so very earnest and injured, that Mr. Gradgrind, shocked by the possibility which dawned upon him, said in a gentler tone:
“Do you deny, then, madam, that you left your son to – to be brought up in the gutter?”
“Josiah in the gutter!” exclaimed Mrs. Pegler. “No such a thing, sir. Never! For shame on you! My dear boy knows, and will give you to know, that though he come of humble parents, he come of parents that loved him as dear as the best could, and never thought it hardship on themselves to pinch a bit that he might write and cipher beautiful, and I’ve his books at home to show it! Aye, have I!” said Mrs. Pegler, with indignant pride. “And my dear boy knows, and will give you to know, sir, that after his beloved father died when he was eight year old, his mother, too, could pinch a bit, as it was her duty and her pleasure and her pride to do it, to help him out in life, and put him ‘prentice. And a steady lad he was, and a kind master he had to lend him a hand, and well he worked his own way forward to be rich and thriving. And I’ll give you to know, sir – for this my dear boy won’t – that though his mother kept but a little village shop, he never forgot her, but pensioned me on thirty pound a-year – more than I want, for I put by out of it – only making the condition that I was to keep down in my own part, and make no boasts about him, and not trouble him. And I never have, except with looking at him once a year, when he has never knowed it. And it’s right,” said poor old Mrs. Pegler, in affectionate championship, “that I should keep down in my own part, and I have no doubts that if I was here I should do a many unbefitting things, and I am well contented, and I can keep my pride in my Josiah to myself, and I can love for love’s own sake! And I am ashamed of you, sir,” said Mrs. Pegler, lastly, “for your slanders and suspicions. And I never stood here before, nor never wanted to stand here when my dear son said no. And I shouldn’t be here now, if it hadn’t been for being brought here. And for shame upon you, O for shame, to accuse me of being a bad mother to my son, with my son standing here to tell you so different!”