A Flat Iron for a Farthing

poetry-sacred and secular-by heart. In an old-fashioned, but slow and thorough manner, I acquired the first outlines of geography, arithmetic, etc., and what Mrs

t together under the Bundle d

a sharp protective eye on their own silk dresses, and perchance pricking one with a brooch or pushing a curl into one eye with a kid-gloved finger-I held in unfeigned

mpressiveness of her manner, her very positive matureness, were just what the crude taste of childhood is apt to be fascinated by. She was the sister of my father's man of business; and she and her bro

eman sacrificing himself for his guests at breakfast. You have enough to do at dinner, carving large joints, and jointing those terrible b

tea-caddy; but at that moment my father quietl

with this," he said, quietly. "I a

ne fill my mother's place. For so it was, and all Miss Burton's eff

emember once hearing a scrap of conversation between our most respectable and respectful but

of a morning, and said, "And ho

?" asked the housekeeper, with a bitterness not s

a-tray, ma'am," replied

the place of that sweet angel, Mrs. Dacre (and she barely two years in her grave),

for me to fail to hear it. Then Nurse Bundle on this subject hardly exercised her usual discretion in withholding me from servants' gossip, and servants' gossip from me. Her own i

t me messages, and vowed that I was quite a little man of the world, and then was sure that I was a desperate flirt. The lank lawyer wagged my hand of a morning, and said, "And how is Miss Eliza's little beau?" And I laughed, and looked important, and talked rather louder, and escaped as ofte

be more troublesome than he us

gging for him to be allowed to stay up at nights and to lunch in the dining-room, and to come down of a morning, and to have a half-holiday in an afternoon

ain. Ah! my poor boy," he added in an irrepressible outburst, "you suffer for lack of

down with a feather, sir," she assured the butler (unlikely as it seemed!) in describ

you, could Master Reginald look better or behave better than he did afore the company come? It's only natural as smart ladies who knows nothing whatever of children, and how they should be brought up, and what's for their good, should think it a kindness to spoil them. Any one may se

t of Mrs. Bundle's freedo

under your orders for the futur

ay," withdrew to say it over again

opriate moments. I got tired of her, too, of the sound of her voice, of her black hair and unchanging red cheeks. And from the day that I caught her beating Rubens for lying on the edge of her dress, I lived in terror of her. Those rolling black eyes had not a pleasant look when the lady was out of tempe

ne day at luncheon; "I like beautiful, s

my father, angrily, and shortly afte

he spectator, and perhaps it was because it was so very lifelike that I had (ever since I could remember) indulged a curious freak of childish sentiment by nodding to the picture and saying, "Good-morning, mamma," whenever I came into the room. Such little superstitions become part of one's life, and I freely confess that I salute that portrait still! I remember, too, that as time went on I lost sight of the fact that it was

ther's piano, and crept slowly and sadly upstairs. I went slowly, partly out of my heavy grief, and partly because I carried Rubens in my arms. Had not the lawyer kicked him becaus

The pedal is yours, and not his, and the whole house is yours,

, and as I wept that overpowering mother-need came over me, which drives even the little ragamuffin of the gutter to carry his complaints to "mother" for comfort

e "Mamma" was, and standing under the pic

bens to lick every inch of my face at once.) "And please, Mamma, we're very miser-r-r-r-rable. And oh! please, Mamma, don't let pa

was purely human, and I was clasped in a woman's arms, and covered with tender kisses and soothing caresses. For one

away some clothes in my father's bedroom, and had b

convinced that in some way it was through her influence that a le