hint, and she was his great pet, so he took
care that the apprentices should not suspect that Amy had been "upset."
So he began to tell what had made him late at home. He had overtaken
poor Widow Smithers in much trouble, for she had had a note from the
hospital to say that her little boy, Edwin, must be discharged as
incurable. It was a hip complaint, and he could not walk, and she had
not been able to find any way of getting him home.

It so happened that all the gentlefolks were out for the day, and she
did not get her letter in time before the market people set off. She was
indeed too poor to hire a conveyance, and was going in, fearing that she
might have to carry this nine-year-old boy herself five miles unless she
could get a lift. So Mr. Lee had driven her into the town, and after
doing his work there, had come up to the hospital, and had taken her in
with poor little Edwin, who was laid on a shawl in the cart, but cried a
good deal at the jolting. The doctors said that they could do no more
for the poor little fellow, and she would have to take him home and do
the best she could for him.

It fell very hard upon her, poor woman, for she was obliged to go out to
work every day, since she had four children, and only Harry, the one who
was older then Edwin, earned anything--and indeed he only got three
shillings a week for minding some cows on the common. The two girls
_must_ go to school, and indeed they were too young to be of much use
and the boy would have to be left alone all day, except for the dinner
hour, as he had been before the hospital had been tried for him.

"There, Amy," said Aunt Charlotte, as they were clearing away the dinner
things after the menfolk had gone out, "there's something you could do.
It would be a real kindness to go in and see after that poor little
man."

"Yes," added Rose; "you might run in at dinner time, and I'd spare you a
little time then, and you might read to him, and cheer him up--yes, and
teach him a bit too."

"Edwin Smithers was always a very tiresome, stupid little boy," said
Amy, rather crossly, from her infant school recollections.

"Then he will want help all the more," said Aunt Rose, and it sounded
almost like mimicry of what Amy had said of old Mrs. Long.

She did not like it at all. It is the devices of our own heart that we
prefer to follow, whether for good or harm, and specially when we think
them good. And yet we specially pray that we may do all such g