t make him the better.
So let him be easy, contented in mind,
Nor suffer his foibles to fret her.
Let every good woman her husband adore,
Then happy her lot, though t be humble and poor.
We live like two turtles, no sorrows we know,
And, fair girl! mind this when you marry."

"What happens, in my house is no concern of yours, Sally," Jonas
would answer sharply. "If some folk would mind their own affairs
they wouldn't be all to sixes and sevens. You look out that you
don't get into trouble yet over that foolish affair of Thomas and
the Countess. I don't fancy you've come to the end of that yet."

So the winter passed, and spring as well, and then came summer,
and just before the scythe cut the green swath, for the hay harvest,
Mehetabel became a mother.

The child that was born to her was small and delicate, it lacked the
sturdiness of its father and of the mother. So frail, indeed, did
the little life seem at first, that grave doubts were entertained
whether the babe would live to be taken to church to be baptized.

Mehetabel did not have the comfort of the presence of Mrs. Verstage.

During the winter that good woman's malady advanced with rapid
strides, and by summer she was confined to her room, and very
generally to her bed.

To Mehetabel it was not only a grief that she was deprived of the
assistance of her "mother," but also that, owing to her own
condition, she was unable to attend on the failing woman. Deprived
of the help of Mrs. Verstage, Mehetabel was thrown on that of her
sister-in-law, Sally Rocliffe. Occasions of this sort call forth
all that is good and tender in woman, and Sally was not at bottom
either a bad or heartless woman. She had been embittered by a
struggle with poverty that had been incessant, and had been allowed
free use of her tongue by a husband, all whose self-esteem had been
taken out of him by his adventure with the "Countess Charlotte,"
and the derision which had rained on him since. She was an envious
and a spiteful woman, and bore a bitter grudge against Mehetabel
for disappointing her ambition of getting her brother's farm
for her own son Samuel. But on the occasion when called to the
assistance of her sister-in-law, she laid aside her malevolence,
and the true humanity in the depths of her nature woke up. She
showed Mehetabel kindness, though in ungracious manner.

Jonas exhibited no interest in the accession to his family, he
would hardly look at the ba