doing things.
'Twarn't ever my way. A woman that's got a baby ought to attend to it.
An' if she don't, her husband ought to make her."

"I've not been gone so long as all that comes to," said Diana; and she
went into the pantry, her old domain. The pans of milk looked friendly
at her; the sweet clean smell of cream carried her back--it seemed
ages--to a time when she was as sweet and clean. "Yet it is not my
fault,"--she said to herself,--"it is _her's_--all her's." She snatched
a piece of bread and a glass of milk, and swallowed it hastily. Then,
as she came out, she saw that one of her mother's hands lay bandaged up
in her lap under the table.

"Mother, what's the matter with your hand?"

"O, not much."

"But what? It's all tied up. Have you burned it?"

"No."

"What then? Cut yourself?"

"I should like to know how I should go to work to cut my right hand!
Don't make a fuss about nothing, Diana. It's only scalded."

"Scalded! How?"

"I shall never be able to tell that, to the end of my days," said Mrs.
Starling. "If pots and kettles and that could be possessed, I should
know what to think. I was makin' strawberry preserve--and the kettle
was a'most full, and it was first rate preserve, and boiling, and
almost done, and I had just set it down on the hearth; and then, I
don't know how to this day, I stumbled--I don't know over what--and my
arm soused right in."

"Boiling sweetmeat!" cried Diana. "Mother, let me see. It must be
dreadfully burned."

"It's all done up," said Mrs. Starling coldly. "I was real put out
about my preserves."

"Have you had dinner?"

"I never found I could live 'thout eating."

"Who got dinner for you, and cleared away?"

"Nobody. I did it myself."

"For the men and all!"

"Well, _they_ don't count to live without eatin', no mor'n I do," said
Mrs. Starling with a short laugh.

"And you did it with one hand!"

"Did you ever know me to stop in anything I had to do, for want of a
hand?" said Mrs. Starling scornfully.

No, thought Diana to herself; nor for want of anything else, even
though it were right or conscience. Aloud she only said,

"I must go home to baby"--

"You had better, I should think," her mother broke in.

"Can I do anything for you first?"

"You can see for yourself, there is nothing to do."

"Shall I come back and stay with you to-night?"

"You had better ask the Dominie."

"Mother, he _never_ wants me to do anything but just what is right,"