eeding he would
certainly have pronounced him a hopeless lunatic. He took the sum
that fell to him and placed it in the bank to his mother's credit.
"The interest money won't amount to much, mother," he said, as he
handed her the certificate of deposit, "but I shall enjoy thinking
that if you want some little thing you can get it without asking
anybody."

Mrs. Sinclair was a woman who lived for society; she had long ago
cast aside as Puritanical the wholesome restraints that had governed
her girlhood. What with parties, operas and theatres, she was a very
busy woman. Her young family was much neglected and she was only too
glad to transfer to her old mother what little care she did give
them. The restful days were gone, one would have supposed that Mrs.
Sinclair had engaged, in her mother, a maid and seamstress. "It's so
nice," she told her friends. "Mother takes the entire charge of them,
and relieves me; children are such a responsibility." It was news to
her friends, the fact that she was an anxious burdened mother.

It was hard for Mrs. Kensett to take up her life at the beginning
again, to be confined day after day in a close room with noisy,
fretful children, to go through the round of story-telling, tying
shoes, mending tops and dolls, and minister to the thousand small
wants and worries of undisciplined childhood. She had gone through
all that, those chapters of her life she had considered finished and
sealed up.

There is no occupation in this world more soul and body trying than
the care of young children. What patience and wisdom, skill, and
unlimited love it calls for. God gave the work to mothers and has
furnished them for it, and they cannot shirk it and be guiltless.

It was not unusual when there was a heavy press of work in the house,
calling for all the forces, for baby too to be bundled into grandma's
room and left for hours. This worked very well while all were in good
humour, for grandma loved children, but when baby writhed and fretted
with aching teeth and would not be comforted, and Master Freddy
resented the least correction by vigorous kicks from his stout little
boots, and Miss Maude lisped, "I shan't! You ain't my mamma!"--what
wonder that grandma, absorbed as she was by sad memories, should lose
her patience too, and speak the sharp word that did not mend matters,
while she sighed in spirit for the days that would not come back
again.

The daughter remembered, too, that mother was cun