o carry."

And then he told me of their sorrowful life, their poverty. The
often-idle father and his dislike for the delicate boy, whose only moment
of happiness was when the weary mother, the poor supper over, sat for a
little to breathe and rest, and held his heavy head upon her loving
breast, while Joe sang his songs or told all the happenings of the day.

That happy Joe, who had no pride and was quite as satisfied without a
seat to his small trousers as with one! Then he told me how hard it was
for Lawrence to learn; how he had to grind and grind at the simplest
lesson, but once having acquired it, it was his for life.

"Why, even now," said he, "in confidence I'm telling you, my brother is
studying like a little child at French, and it does seem that he cannot
learn it. He works so desperately over it, a doctor has warned him he
must choose between French and his many 'parts' or break down from
overwork. But he _will_ go on hammering at his _parlez-vous_ until he
learns them or dies trying."

"If you were to live with your brother, might not that help to keep you
strong?" I asked.

"Now, my dear little woman," he smiled, "Larry is human, in some
respects, if he is almost God-like toward me. Remember he has a young
family now, and though his wife is as good as gold and always patient
with me, I am not the kind of example a man would care to place before
his little ones, and as Lawrence is devoured with ambition for them and
their future, he rightly guards them from too close contact with the drag
and curse of his own life, in whom he, and he alone, can see the sturdy
tow-headed brother of the old boyish days, who saved him from many and
many a kick and thump his delicate body could ill have borne."

Joe told me of his dead wife--Viola Crocker that was--the niece of Mrs.
Bowers and Mrs. Conway; of their happiness and their misery. Describing
himself as having been "in heaven or in hell--without any betwixts and
betweens." His devotion to me was very great. He was "hard-up" for money,
as the men express it, but he would manage to bring me a single rose or
one bunch of grapes or a half-dozen mushrooms or some such small offering
every day; and learning of his bitter mortification because he could not
hire a carriage to take me out to see the curious old French cemetery, I
made him supremely happy by expressing a desire to ride in one of those
funny bob-tailed, mule-drawn street-cars--the result being a trip by my