This declaration so damped the feelings of the mother that she could not reply for some moments.  At length she said—­

“If you will take my boy with the understanding, that, in case I am not able to support him, or hear of a situation where a salary can be obtained, you will let him leave your employment without hard feelings, he shall go into your store at once.”

To this the man consented, and Hiram Mayberry went with him according to agreement.  A few weeks passed, and the lad, liking both the business and his employer, his mother felt exceedingly anxious for him to remain.  But she sadly feared that this could not be.  Her little store was just about exhausted, and the most she had yet been able to earn by working for the shops, was a dollar and a half a week.  This was not more than sufficient to buy the plainest food for her little flock.  It would not pay rent, nor get clothing.  To meet the former, recourse was had to the sale of her husband’s small, select library.  Careful mending kept the younger children tolerably decent, and by altering for him the clothes left by his father, she was able to keep Hiram in a suitable condition, to appear at the store of his employer.

Thus matters went on for several months.  Mrs. Mayberry, working late and early.  The natural result was, a gradual failure of strength.  In the morning, when she awoke, she would feel so languid and heavy, that to rise required a strong effort, and even after she was up, and attempted to resume her labors, her trembling frame almost refused to obey the dictates of her will.  At length, nature gave way.  One morning she was so sick that she could not rise.  Her head throbbed with a dizzy, blinding pain—­her whole body ached, and her skin burned with fever.  Hiram got something for the children to eat, and then taking the youngest, a little girl about two years old, into the house of a neighbor, who had showed them some good-will, asked her if she would take care of his sister until he returned home at dinner time.  This the neighbor readily consented to do—­promising, also, to call in frequently and see his mother.

At dinner-time, Hiram found his mother quite ill.  She was no better at night.  For three days the fever raged violently.  Then, under the careful treatment of their old family physician, it was subdued.  After that she gradually recovered, but very slowly.  The physician said she must not attempt again to work as she had done.  This injunction was scarcely necessary.  She had not the strength to do so.

“I don’t see what you will do, Mrs. Mayberry,” a neighbor who had often aided her by kind advice, said, in reply to the widow’s statement of her unhappy condition.  “You cannot maintain these children, certainly.  And I don’t see how, in your present feeble state, you are going to maintain yourself.  There is but one thing that I can advise, and that advice I give with reluctance.  It is to endeavor to get two of your children into some orphan asylum.  The youngest you may be able to keep with you.  The oldest can support himself at something or other.”