and
above all, had been good to Annie. And I found hard work to make them
listen to my wish upon this point; for of all the Doones, Sir Counsellor
had made himself most hated, by his love of law and reason.

We arranged that all our men should come and fall into order with pike
and musket, over against our dung-hill, and we settled early in the day,
that their wives might come and look at them. For most of these men had
good wives; quite different from sweethearts, such as the militia had;
women indeed who could hold to a man, and see to him, and bury him--if
his luck were evil--and perhaps have no one afterwards. And all these
women pressed their rights upon their precious husbands, and brought so
many children with them, and made such a fuss, and hugging, and racing
after little legs, that our farm-yard might be taken for an out-door
school for babies rather than a review ground.

I myself was to and fro among the children continually; for if I love
anything in the world, foremost I love children. They warm, and yet they
cool our hearts, as we think of what we were, and what in young clothes
we hoped to be; and how many things have come across. And to see our
motives moving in the little things that know not what their aim or
object is, must almost or ought at least, to lead us home, and soften
us. For either end of life is home; both source and issue being God.

Nevertheless, I must confess that the children were a plague sometimes.
They never could have enough of me--being a hundred to one, you might
say--but I had more than enough of them; and yet was not contented.
For they had so many ways of talking, and of tugging at my hair, and
of sitting upon my neck (not even two with their legs alike), and they
forced me to jump so vehemently, seeming to court the peril of my coming
down neck and crop with them, and urging me still to go faster, however
fast I might go with them; I assure you that they were sometimes so hard
and tyrannical over me, that I might almost as well have been among the
very Doones themselves.

Nevertheless, the way in which the children made me useful proved also
of some use to me; for their mothers were so pleased by the exertions of
the 'great Gee-gee'--as all the small ones entitled me--that they gave
me unlimited power and authority over their husbands; moreover, they did
their utmost among their relatives round about, to fetch recruits
for our little band. And by such means, several of t