“Well, miss, when you came into the world, your mamma could not nurse you.  I do notice the gentry that eat the fat of the land are none the better for it; for a poor woman can do a mother’s part by her child, but high-born and high-fed folk can’t always; so you had to be brought up by hand, miss, and it did not agree with you, and that is no great wonder, seeing it is against nature.  Well, my little girl, that was born just two days after you, died in my arms of convulsion fits when she was just a month old.  She had only just been buried, and me in bitter grief, when doesn’t the doctor call and ask me as a great favor, would I nurse Mrs. Fountain’s child, that was pining for want of its natural food.  I bade him get out of my sight.  I felt as if no woman had a right to have a child living when my little darling was gone.  But my husband, a just man as ever was, said, ’Take a thought, Mary; the child is really pining, by all accounts.’  Well, I would not listen to him.  But next Sunday, after afternoon church, my mother, that had not said a word till then, comes to me, and puts her hand on my shoulder with a quiet way she had.  ‘Mary,’ says she, ’I am older than you, and have known more.’  She had buried six of us, poor thing.  Says she, scarce above a whisper, ’Suckle that failing child.  It will be the better for her, and the better for you, Mary, my girl.’  Well, miss, my mother was a woman that didn’t interfere every minute, and seldom gave her reasons; but, if you scorned her advice, you mostly found them out to your cost; and then she was my mother; and in those days mothers were more thought of, leastways by us that were women and had suffered for our children, and so learned to prize the woman that had suffered for us.  ‘Well, then,’ I said, ’if you say so, mother, I suppose I didn’t ought to gainsay you, on the Lord His day.’  For you see my mother was one that chose her time for speaking—­eh! but she was wise.  ‘Mother,’ says I, ‘to oblige you, so be it’; and with that I fell to crying sore on my mother’s neck, and she wasn’t long behind me, you may be sure.  Whiles we sat a crying in one another’s arms, in comes John, and goes to speak a word of comfort.  ‘It is not that,’ says my mother; ’she have given her consent to nurse Mrs. Fountain’s little girl.’  ‘It is much to her credit,’ says he:  says he, ’I will take her up to the house myself.’  ‘What for?’ says I; ’them that grants the favor has no call to run after them that asks it.’  You see, Miss Lucy, that was my ignorance; we were small farmers, too independent to be fawning, and not high enough to weed ourselves of upishness.  Your mamma, she was a real lady, so she had no need to trouble about her dignity; she thought only of her child; and she didn’t send the child, but she came with it herself.  Well, she came into our kitchen, and made her obeisance, and we to her, and mother dusted her a seat.  She was pale-like, and a mother’s care was in her face, and that went to my heart.  ’This