with the hardish look
of the lower classes; but now, when she sat in a sunny window, and
lowered her black lashes on her nursling, with the mixed and delicious
smile of an exuberant nurse relieving and relieved, she was soft,
poetical, sculptorial, maternal, womanly.

This species of contemplation, though half philosophical, half
paternal, and quite innocent, gave Lady Bassett some severe pangs.

She hid them, however; only she bided her time, and then suggested the
propriety of weaning baby.

But Mrs. Gosport got Sir Charles's ear, and told him what magnificent
children they reared in her village by not weaning infants till they
were eighteen months old or so.

By this means, and by crying to Lady Bassett, and representing her
desolate condition with a husband at sea, she obtained a reprieve,
coupled, however, with a good-humored assurance from Sir Charles that
she was the greatest baby of the two.

When the inevitable hour approached that was to dethrone her she took
to reading the papers, and one day she read of a disastrous wreck, the
_Carbrea Castle_--only seven saved out of a crew of twenty-three. She
read the details carefully, and two days afterward she received a
letter written by a shipmate of Mr. Gosport's, in a handwriting not
very unlike her own, relating the sad wreck of the _Carbrea Castle,_
and the loss of several good sailors, James Gosport for one.

Then the house was filled with the wailing and weeping of the bereaved
widow; and at last came consolers and raised doubts; but then somebody
remembered to have seen the loss of that very ship in the paper. The
paper was found, and the fatal truth was at once established.

Upon this Mr. Bassett was weaned as quickly as possible, and the widow
clothed in black at Lady Bassett's expense, and everything in reason
done to pet her and console her.

But she cried bitterly, and said she would throw herself into the sea
and follow her husband.

Huntercombe was nowhere near the coast.

At last, however, she relented, and concluded to remain on earth as
dry-nurse to Mr. Bassett.

Sir Charles did not approve this: it seemed unreasonable to turn a
wet-nurse into a dry-nurse when that office was already occupied by a
person her senior and more experienced.

Lady Bassett agreed with him, but shrugged her shoulders and said, "Two
nurses will not hurt, and I suspect it will not be for long. Mary does
not feel her husband's loss one bit."

"Surely you are m