u feel sorry for your husband, I feel sorry for mine.
'Taint right to keep the little feller here while you can't lift a hand
to do for him, so I'm goin' to take him to my house, with my eight
children, because there's luck in odd numbers, and I'll feed him up,
pore little soul, and wash him and mend him, and start him to playin'
with Ignatius and Aloysius, for children ought to play, and Patrick 'll
come every morning and start your fire, although he is a Sergeant, and
we want to help you, and you must help us."

Mrs. Lawrence was not made of stone, and could not forever resist Mrs.
McGillicuddy's kindness, and so it came about that the McGillicuddys
took care of Lawrence's boy, whose face grew round and rosy with the
generous McGillicuddy fare. A part of Mrs. McGillicuddy's good will to
him was that she instructed Ignatius and Aloysius McGillicuddy, both
excellent fist fighters for their age, that they were to lick any boy,
no matter what his age or size, who dared to taunt little Ronald about
his father or anything else. These orders were extremely agreeable to
the McGillicuddy boys, who loved fighting for fighting's sake, and who
sought occasions to practise the manly art.

Colonel Fortescue sent word to Mrs. Lawrence that she could occupy her
quarters until she was able to make some plan for the future. It
seemed, however, utterly indefinite when Mrs. Lawrence would be able to
plan anything. She lay in her bed or sat in her chair, silent, pale,
and as weak as a child. The blow of her husband's desertion seemed to
have stopped all the springs of action. Neither the chaplain, the
post-surgeon, nor Mrs. McGillicuddy, singly or united, could rouse Mrs.
Lawrence from the deadly lassitude of a broken heart. Both the
chaplain and the surgeon had seen such cases, and nothing in the
pharmacopoeia could cure them.

Mrs. Fortescue, whose heart was not less tender from long dwelling on
the airy heights of happiness and perfect love, was full of sympathy
for Lawrence's unfortunate wife, and would have gone to see her, but
Mrs. McGillicuddy, who delivered the message, brought back a
discouraging reply.

"She says, mum, as she don't need nothin' at all, and I think, mum, she
kinder shrinks from the orficers' wives more than from the soldiers'
wives."

Anita, who was sitting by, went to her mother and, putting her arms
around Mrs. Fortescue's neck, whispered:

"Mother, let me go to see Mrs. Lawrence. I don't think s