y father and brother came home in the evening, faint and tired
from the two long walks and the day's work, my mother would always try
to have something for them to eat with their porridge--a bit of butter,
or a bowl of thick milk, or maybe a few eggs. She always gave me plenty
as far as it would go; but 'twas little she took herself. She would
often go entirely without a meal, and then she'd slip down to the
huckster's, and buy a little white bun for Mary; and I'm sure it used to
do her more good to see the child eat it, than if she had got a
meat-dinner for herself. No matter how hungry the poor little thing
might be, she'd always break off a bit to put into her mother's mouth,
and she would not be satisfied until she saw her swallow it; then the
child would take a drink of cold water out of her little tin porringer,
as contented as if it was new milk.

As the winter advanced, the weather became wet and bitterly cold, and
the poor men working on the roads began to suffer dreadfully from being
all day in wet clothes, and, what was worse, not having any change to
put on when they went home at night without a dry thread about them.
Fever soon got among them, and my father took it. My mother brought the
doctor to see him, and by selling all our decent clothes, she got for
him whatever was wanting, but all to no use: 'twas the will of the Lord
to take him to himself, and he died after a few days' illness.

It would be hard to tell the sorrow that his widow and orphans felt,
when they saw the fresh sods planted on his grave. It was not grief
altogether like the grand stately grief of the quality, although maybe
the same sharp knife is sticking into the same sore bosom _inside_ in
both; but the _outside_ differs in rich and poor. I saw the mistress a
week after Miss Ellen died. She was in her drawing-room with the blinds
pulled down, sitting in a low chair, with her elbow on the small
work-table, and her cheek resting on her hand--not a speck of any thing
white about her but the cambric handkerchief, and the face that was
paler than the marble chimney-piece.

When she saw me (for the butler, being busy, sent me in with the
luncheon-tray), she covered her eyes with her handkerchief, and began to
cry, but quietly, as if she did not want it to be noticed. As I was
going out, I just heard her say to Miss Alice in a choking voice:

"Keep Sally here always; our poor darling was fond of her." And as I
closed the door, I heard her