's food--the
mother whom Nature has made the direct vehicle of food to infant lips.
To mince a chop for Nais, who has just cut her last teeth, and mix the
meat, cooked to a turn, with potatoes, is a work of patience, and there
are times, indeed, when none but a mother could succeed in making an
impatient child go through with its meal.

No number of servants, then, and no English nurse can dispense a mother
from taking the field in person in that daily contest, where gentleness
alone should grapple with the little griefs and pains of childhood.
Louise, the care of these innocent darlings is a work to engage the
whole soul. To whose hand and eyes, but one's own, intrust the task of
feeding, dressing, and putting to bed? Broadly speaking, a crying child
is the unanswerable condemnation of mother or nurse, except when the cry
is the outcome of natural pain. Now that I have two to look after (and
a third on the road), they occupy all my thoughts. Even you, whom I love
so dearly, have become a memory to me.

My own dressing is not always completed by two o'clock. I have no faith
in mothers whose rooms are in apple-pie order, and who themselves might
have stepped out of a bandbox. Yesterday was one of those lovely days
of early April, and I wanted to take my children for a walk, while I was
still able--for the warning bell is in my ears. Such an expedition is
quite an epic to a mother! One dreams of it the night before! Armand was
for the first time to put on a little black velvet jacket, a new collar
which I had worked, a Scotch cap with the Stuart colors and cock's
feathers; Nais was to be in white and pink, with one of those delicious
little baby caps; for she is a baby still, though she will lose that
pretty title on the arrival of the impatient youngster, whom I call my
beggar, for he will have the portion of a younger son. (You see, Louise,
the child has already appeared to me in a vision, so I know it is a
boy.)

Well, caps, collars, jackets, socks, dainty little shoes, pink garters,
the muslin frock with silk embroidery,--all was laid out on my bed. Then
the little brown heads had to be brushed, twittering merrily all the
time like birds, answering each other's call. Armand's hair is in curls,
while Nais' is brought forward softly on the forehead as a border to the
pink-and-white cap. Then the shoes are buckled; and when the little
bare legs and well-shod feet have trotted off to the nursery, while
two shining face