On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from Miss Abbot's communications to Bessie, that my father had been a poor clergyman; that my mother had married him against the wishes of her friends, who considered the match beneath her; that my grandfather Reed was so irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that after my mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then prevalent: that my mother took the infection from him, and both died within a month of each other.
Allora seppi per la prima volta, dai discorsi che Abbot fece a Bessie, che mio padre era un povero pastore, che mia madre lo aveva sposato contro il volere dei suoi, che consideravano quel matrimonio inferiore alla sua condizione. Il nonno Reed, irritato da quella disubbidienza, aveva diseredato la mamma.