ke everybody up in the middle
of the night.

Yet Mary loved her mother, and sought in many ways to meet her wishes, and
all the time her mother kept the bureau-drawer locked, and away somewhere
on a high shelf was hidden all tenderness--all the gentle, loving words
and the caresses which children crave.

And little Mary's life seemed full of troubles, and the world a grievous
place where everybody misunderstands everybody else; and at nighttime she
would often hide her face in the pillow and cry herself to sleep.

But when she was ten years of age a great joy came into her life--a baby
brother came! And all the love in the little girl's heart was poured out
for the puny baby boy. Babies are troublesome things, anyway, where folks
are awful poor and where there are no servants and the mother is not so
very strong. And so Mary became the baby's own little foster-mother, and
she carried him about, and long before he could lisp a word she had told
him all the hopes and secrets of her heart, and he cooed and laughed, and
lying on the floor, kicked his heels in the air and treated hope and love
and ambition alike.

I can not find that Mary ever went to school. She stayed at home and
sewed, did housework, and took care of the baby. All her learning came by
absorption. When the boy was three years old she taught him his letters,
and did it so deftly and well that he used to declare he could always
read--and this is as it should be. When seven years of age the boy was
sent to the Blue-Coat School. This was brought about through the influence
of Mr. Salt, for whom John Lamb worked. Mr. Salt was a Bencher, and be it
known a Bencher in England is not exactly the same thing as a Bencher in
America. Mr. Salt took quite a notion to little Mary Lamb, and once when
she came to his office with her father's dinner, the honorable Bencher
chucked her under the chin, said she was a fine little girl, and asked her
if she liked to read. And when she answered, "Oh, yes, sir!" and then
added, "If you please!" the Bencher laughed, and told her she was welcome
to take any book in his library. And so we find she spent many happy hours
in the great man's library; and it was through her importunities that Mr.
Salt got banty Charles the scholarship in Christ's Hospital School.

Now the Blue-Coat boys are a curiosity to every sight-seer in London--and
have been for these hundred years and more. Their long-tailed blue coats,
buckle-shoes, and absenc