"Every
one likes to be missed; but I hope you didn't want me too much, mother."

"No, dear; but, like father, I am glad to get you back again." And the
mother's eyes rested fondly on the girl's face. "Now you must not make
me idle, for I have all these accounts to do, and some notes to write.
Go on with your talking; it will not interrupt me."

It spoke well for the Lambert girls that their mother's presence never
interfered with them; they talked as freely before her as other girls do
in their parent's absence. From children they had never been repressed
nor unnaturally subdued; their childish preferences and tastes had been
known and respected; no thoughtless criticism had wounded their
susceptibility; imperceptibly and gently maternal advice had guided and
restrained them.

"We tell mother everything, and she likes to hear it," Ella and Katie
would say to their school-fellows.

"We never have secrets from her," Ella added. "Katie did once, and
mother was so hurt that she cried about it. Don't you recollect, Katie?"

"Yes, and it is horrid of you to remind me," returned Katie wrathfully,
and she walked away in high dudgeon; the recollection was not a pleasant
one. Katie's soft heart had been pierced by her mother's unfeigned grief
and tender reproaches.

"You are the only one of all my little girls who ever hid anything from
me. No, I am not angry with you, Katie, and I will kiss you as much as
you like," for Katie's arms were round her neck in a moment; "but you
have made mother cry, because you do not love her as she does you."

"Mother shall never cry again on my account," thought Katie; and,
strange to say, the tendency to secretiveness in the child's nature
seemed cured from that day. Katie ever afterward confessed her
misdemeanors and the accidents that happen to the best-regulated
children with a frankness that bordered on bluntness.

"I have done it, mother," she would say, "but somehow I don't feel a bit
sorry. I rather liked hurting Ella's feelings; it seemed to serve her
right."

"Perhaps when we have talked about it a little you will feel sorry," her
mother would reply quietly; "but I have no time for talking just now."

Mrs. Lambert was always very busy; on these occasions she never found
time for a heated and angry discussion. When Katie's hot cheeks had
cooled a little, and her childish wrath had evaporated, she would
quietly argue the point with her. It was an odd thing that Katie
generall