ning with her
needle; how very convenient it became to send the mending basket to
her room, "just for some work to pass the time away," and in time
numberless little garments were sent there too, aprons and dresses,
and she sat and stitched from morning till night when she was not
tending baby. Nobody suggested a ride or a walk for her, or invited
her down stairs to while away an evening when there was company.

"Mother isn't used to it," Maria said; "besides, she can't hear half
that is said. She enjoys herself better alone; I suppose all old
people do." This course of reasoning seemed to soothe Mrs. Sinclair's
conscience when it proved troublesome, but in truth she would not
have enjoyed introducing her plain-looking mother to her fashionable
friends. "So old style." The old ladies she was accustomed to meet
wore trail and puffs and dress caps; she might have searched long,
though, to find another old face of such sweet placid dignity as her
mother's.

This life in the crowded city was so new and strange and dismal. How
the mother longed amid its dust and smoke for the sweet air of
Hawthorn, for a sprig of lilac, or a June rose from the garden. Once
in a rare while she succeeded in getting to church. It was a
difficult thing to bring about, though; when nothing happened to
prevent, the carriage was driven there, but apparently in that family
there were more hindrances to church-going than to any other sort of
going.

Now that spring had come again, Mrs. Kensett looked forward to a
change of her home with pleasure; she wanted to get into the country
once more, and Martha, the second daughter, had married a farmer and
lived in the country; it was a long distance from Hawthorn, and she
had not visited her daughter since her marriage. The pleasant home
among trees and flowers and greenness that she had pictured was not
there; instead, a bare frame house on a side hill without a tree or
vine; there was no time to enjoy them had they been there; the long
hot days were filled up with work; endless milking and baking and
churning, and the unselfish mother put in her waning strength, early
and late, did what she could to lighten the burden that was making
her daughter prematurely old. Then the dismal winter settled down
upon them, monotonous days of sleet and snow and darkness, when
nothing happened from week to week to break the dreary routine, when
even the Sabbaths brought no relief.

Mrs. Kensett had ever been an unt