It was not unusual when there was a heavy press of work in the house, calling for all the forces, for baby too to be bundled into grandma’s room and left for hours.  This worked very well while all were in good humour, for grandma loved children, but when baby writhed and fretted with aching teeth and would not be comforted, and Master Freddy resented the least correction by vigorous kicks from his stout little boots, and Miss Maude lisped, “I shan’t!  You ain’t my mamma!”—­what wonder that grandma, absorbed as she was by sad memories, should lose her patience too, and speak the sharp word that did not mend matters, while she sighed in spirit for the days that would not come back again.

The daughter remembered, too, that mother was cunning with her needle; how very convenient it became to send the mending basket to her room, “just for some work to pass the time away,” and in time numberless little garments were sent there too, aprons and dresses, and she sat and stitched from morning till night when she was not tending baby.  Nobody suggested a ride or a walk for her, or invited her down stairs to while away an evening when there was company.

“Mother isn’t used to it,” Maria said; “besides, she can’t hear half that is said.  She enjoys herself better alone; I suppose all old people do.”  This course of reasoning seemed to soothe Mrs. Sinclair’s conscience when it proved troublesome, but in truth she would not have enjoyed introducing her plain-looking mother to her fashionable friends.  “So old style.”  The old ladies she was accustomed to meet wore trail and puffs and dress caps; she might have searched long, though, to find another old face of such sweet placid dignity as her mother’s.

This life in the crowded city was so new and strange and dismal.  How the mother longed amid its dust and smoke for the sweet air of Hawthorn, for a sprig of lilac, or a June rose from the garden.  Once in a rare while she succeeded in getting to church.  It was a difficult thing to bring about, though; when nothing happened to prevent, the carriage was driven there, but apparently in that family there were more hindrances to church-going than to any other sort of going.

Now that spring had come again, Mrs. Kensett looked forward to a change of her home with pleasure; she wanted to get into the country once more, and Martha, the second daughter, had married a farmer and lived in the country; it was a long distance from Hawthorn, and she had not visited her daughter since her marriage.  The pleasant home among trees and flowers and greenness that she had pictured was not there; instead, a bare frame house on a side hill without a tree or vine; there was no time to enjoy them had they been there; the long hot days were filled up with work; endless milking and baking and churning, and the unselfish mother put in her waning strength, early and late, did what she could to lighten the burden that was making her daughter prematurely old.  Then the dismal winter settled down upon them, monotonous days of sleet and snow and darkness, when nothing happened from week to week to break the dreary routine, when even the Sabbaths brought no relief.