ere were many occasions when it was necessary
for her to deny requests, and to ask services, especially from the
eldest boy; but no young girl, anxious to please a lover, could have
done either with a more tender courtesy. She had her reward; for no
lover could have been more tender and manly than was this boy of 12.
Their lunch was simple and scanty; but it had the grace of a royal
banquet. At the last, the mother produced with much glee three apples
and an orange, of which the children had not known. All eyes fastened on
the orange. It was evidently a great rarity. I watched to see if this
test would bring out selfishness. There was a little silence; just the
shade of a cloud. The mother said: "How shall I divide this? There is
one for each of you; and I shall be best off of all, for I expect big
tastes from each of you."

"Oh, give Annie the orange. Annie loves oranges," spoke out the oldest
boy, with a sudden air of a conqueror, and at the same time taking the
smallest and worst apple himself.

"Oh, yes, let Annie have the orange," echoed the second boy, nine years
old.

"Yes, Annie may have the orange, because that is nicer than the apple,
and she is a lady, and her brothers are gentlemen," said the mother,
quietly. Then there was a merry contest as to who should feed the mother
with largest and most frequent mouthfuls; and so the feast went on. Then
Annie pretended to want an apple, and exchanged thin golden strips of
orange for bites out of the cheeks of Baldwins; and, as I sat watching
her intently, she suddenly fancied she saw longing in my face, and
sprang over to me, holding out a quarter of her orange, and saying,
"Don't you want a taste, too?" The mother smiled, understandingly, when
I said, "No, I thank you, you dear, generous little girl; I don't care
about oranges."

At noon we had a tedious interval of waiting at a dreary station. We sat
for two hours on a narrow platform, which the sun had scorched till it
smelled of heat. The oldest boy--the little lover--held the youngest
child, and talked to her, while the tired mother closed her eyes and
rested. Now and then he looked over at her, and then back at the baby;
and at last he said confidentially to me (for we had become fast friends
by this time): "Isn't it funny, to think that I was ever so small as
this baby? And papa says that then mamma was almost a little girl
herself."

The two other children were toiling up and down the banks of the
railr