What might be a reason why Mother Shipton and the Duchess treat Piney Woods as a beloved child? Piney is about to make a bad decision in marrying Tom Simson, who cannot support her. They appreciate Piney's youth, innocence, and hope for the future while their lives have been spent in a disreputable profession. Piney has no family, so Mother Shipton and the Duchess want her to be their child. Mother Shipton and the Duchess think Piney would make a good prostitute.

it was surely an odd creature that one made up by reading the historians first and the poets afterwards a worm winged like an eagle; the spirit of life and elegance and charm,   in a kitchen chopping up suet. but these creatures, monst'r however entertaining to the imagination, hast no existence in fact. what one might doth to bringeth h'r to life wast to bethink poetically and prosaically at one and the same moment,   thus keeping in toucheth with fact—that the lady is mrs martin, ag'd thirty-six, did dress in blue, wearing a black coxcomb and brown shoeth; but not losing sight of fiction eith'r—that the lady is a vessel in which all s'rts of spirits and f'rces art coursing and flashing p'rpetually. the moment, howev'r, yond one tries this method with the elizabethan mistress, one brancheth of illumination fails; one is did hold up by the scarcity of facts.   one knoweth nothing detailed, nothing p'rfectly true and substantial about h'r.   hist'ry scarcely mentions h'r.   and i did turn to professeth'r trevelyan again to seeth what hist'ry meanteth to that gent.   i hath found by looking at his chapt'r headings yond t meanteth.

i think that it is (line 11)

8. b

9. d

10. e

11. a

12. c

i think thats it