r whom my
girls have the deepest and most sincere affection--that is old Jane,
their Irish nurse, who came to them just after they were weaned and
stayed with us until the period of maids and governesses arrived. I paid
her twenty-five dollars a month, and for nearly ten years she never let
them out of her sight--crooning over them at night; trudging after them
during the daytime; mending their clothes; brushing their teeth; cutting
their nails; and teaching them strange Irish legends of the banshee.
When I called her into the library and told her the children were now
too old for her and that they must have a governess, the look that came
into her face haunted me for days.

"Ye'll be after taking my darlin's away from me?" she muttered in a dead
tone. "'T will be hard for me!" She stood as if the heart had died
within her, and the hundred-dollar bill I shoved into her hand fell to
the floor. Then she turned quickly and hurried out of the room without a
sob. I heard afterward that she cried for a week.

Now I always know when one of their birthdays has arrived by the queer
package, addressed in old Jane's quaint half-printed writing, that
always comes. She has cared for many dozens of children since then, but
loves none like my girls, for she came to them in her young womanhood
and they were her first charges.

And they are just as fond of her. Indeed it is their loyalty to this old
Irish nurse that gives me faith that they are not the cold propositions
they sometimes seem to be. For once when, after much careless delay, a
fragmentary message came to us that she was ill and in a hospital my two
daughters, who were just starting for a ball, flew to her bedside, sat
with her all through the night and never left her until she was out of
danger.

"They brought me back--my darlin's!" she whispered to us when later we
called to see how she was getting on; and my wife looked at me across
the rumpled cot and her lips trembled. I knew what was in her mind.
Would her daughters have rushed to her with the same forgetfulness of
self as to this prematurely gray and wrinkled woman whose shrunken form
lay between us?

Poor old Jane! Alone in an alien land, giving your life and your love to
the children of others, only to have them torn from your arms just as
the tiny fingers have entwined themselves like tendrils round your
heart! We have tossed you the choicest blessings of our lives and
shouldered you with the heavy responsibi