may ride your grey pony, I wish you could be there to watch the fine

expression of his face. How he does love dumb animals! It was only last

Saturday, he knocked down a boy nearly three times his own size for

poking a pin into a poor donkey with the fish. And Maggie to have a

flower-bed on your front lawn! They won't let her touch a plant, at our

cottage, though she understands gardening so thoroughly. She won't

sleep a wink to-night, if I tell her, and I had better keep that for the

morning. Poor children! They have had a hard time of it; but they have

come out like pure gold from the fire--I mean as many of them as can use

their legs. But to be on horseback--what will Bob say?"

"You must have met with very little kindness, Mrs. Stubbard, to attach

any importance to such mere trifles. It makes me blush to think that

there can be a spot in England where such children as yours could pass

unnoticed. It is not a question of religious feeling only. Far from

it; in fact, quite the opposite; though my husband, of course, is quite

right in insisting that all our opinions and actions must be referred

to that one standard. But I look at things also from a motherly point

of view, because I have suffered such sad trials. Three dear ones in the

churchyard, and the dearest of all--the Almighty only knows where he is.

Sometimes it is more than I can bear, to live on in this dark and most

dreadful uncertainty. My medical man has forbidden me to speak of it.

But how can he know what it is to be a mother? But hush! Or darling

Faith may hear me. Sometimes I lose all self-command."

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