Thoughts of the ill-training that had made such a poor piece of life-work out of the rich materials before me made my heart ache.  She sat still, looking in the fire, like a child, rebuked and chidden for some unconscious fault.  So many fine traits of character, yet such a hopeless want of balance, such an utter wrongheadedness!  I turned, and did what I very seldom do, yielded to my impulses of compassionate tenderness and kissed her.  To my surprise, she burst into a hearty fit of crying.

“If I had known you early! or if my mother had lived!” she sobbed; “but now I am good for nothing!  I don’t know what is right nor what is wrong!”

“Don’t say so,—­we can always try.”

“Not this.  I could at first.  But to be always treated like a baby,—­and if I express any contrary opinion, or show that I’ve a mind of my own,—­a sick baby!  I can tell you this comes pretty hard three hundred and sixty-five days in a year!  Oh, I wish I were a free woman!  There!  I am going to stop now.  But you know.”

I was only too glad to be interrupted by our two husbands.  Lulu ran up-stairs,—­I supposed, to bathe her eyes and compose herself.  She, however, was down again in a minute, with some drapery which she wound about her after the fashion Lady Hamilton was said to do, and represented, like her, the Muses, and various statues.  With the curtain and one light she managed to give a very statuesque effect.  Mr. Lewis was evidently very proud of her grace and talent, and she had a pretty, wilful, bird-like way with him, that was fascinating, and did not seem, as I thought it must really be, mechanical.  I felt, more than ever, how idle it must be to talk with her.  The affectionate respect, the joyful uplooking of wifehood, was not to be taught by words, nor to be taught, in fact, any way.  Mr. Lewis’s manner to his wife, which I criticized carefully, was always tender and dignified.  And, from my knowledge of him, I felt sure that his expression was that of genuine feeling.  Evidently he did not understand her feelings at all.  She longed for encouragement and improvement.  He looked at her as a lovely child only.

Being a minister’s wife, I felt called on to labor in my vocation, and from time to time watch the pliant moment, and endeavor to lead Lulu’s mind to the foundation of all truth.  But, surely, never fell seed on such stony ground.  To be sure, the flowers sprang up.  Dewy, rich, and running, they climbed over the rocks beneath; but they shed their perfume, and shrank dead in a day, leaving the stones bare.  I was discouraged about sowing seed.

The Lewises had been but a few weeks in Boston, when Lulu brought Mr. Remington in one morning to make a call.  He was dressed in black, and told me he had been a widower six months.  His bright, genial face and healthful nature seemed not to have sustained any severe shock, however, and he spoke with great composure of his loss.

He was at Mr. Lewis’s a great deal.  It seemed as a matter of course.  As an accomplished man, with great powers of entertaining, he must naturally be acceptable there; but we were too much occupied with family and parish matters to see much of him, and about that time went on a journey of some weeks.