t a finger-ache, and how could I tell her
that I was such a miserable creature in the eyes of other folks? But I
presently found out for myself why and wherefore they pitied me; for
seven who called me fatherless, seventy would speak of me as motherless
when they addressed me with pity. Our misfortune was that we had no
mother. But was there not Cousin Maud, and was not she as good as any
mother? To be sure she was only a cousin, and she must lack something of
what a real mother feels.

And though I was but a heedless, foolish child I kept my eyes open and
began to look about me. I took no one into the secret but my brothers,
and though my elder brother chid me, and bid me only be thankful to our
cousin for all her goodness, I nevertheless began to watch and learn.

There were a number of children at the Stromers' house--the Golden Rose
was its name--and they were still happy in having their mother. She was a
very cheerful young woman, as plump as a cherry, and pink and white like
blood on snow; and she never fixed her gaze on me as others did, but
would frolic with me or scold me sharply when I did any wrong. At the
Muffels, on the contrary, the mistress was dead, and the master had not
long after brought home another mother to his little ones, a stepmother,
Susan, who was my maid, was wont to call her; and such a mother was no
more a real mother than our good cousin--I knew that much from the fairy
tales to which I was ever ready to hearken. But I saw this very
stepmother wash and dress little Elsie, her husband's youngest babe and
not her own, and lull her till she fell asleep; and she did it right
tenderly, and quite as she ought. And then, when the child was asleep she
kissed it, too, on its brow and cheeks.

And yet Mistress Stromer, of the Golden-Rose House, did differently; for
when she took little Clare that was her own babe out of the water, and
laid it on warm clouts on the swaddling board, she buried her face in the
sweet, soft flesh, and kissed the whole of its little body all over,
before and behind, from head to foot, as if it were all one sweet, rosy
mouth; and they both laughed with hearty, loving merriment, as the mother
pressed her lips against the babe's white, clean skin and trumpeted till
the room rang, or clasped it, wrapped in napkins to her warm breast, as
if she could hug it to death. And she broke into a loud, strange laugh,
and cried as she fondled it: "My treasure, my darling, my God-sent j