e he lost his leg,
but I do think she ought to make an effort now."

However, Mrs. Sankey made no effort, nor did her husband ever hint that
it would be better for herself as well as her family if she did so.
He accepted the situation as inevitable, and patiently, and indeed
willingly, bore her burden as well as his own.

Fortunately she had in the children's nurse an active and trustworthy
woman. Abijah Wolf was a Yorkshire woman. She had in her youth been
engaged to a lad in her native village. In a moment of drunken folly, a
short time before the day fixed for their wedding, he had been persuaded
to enlist. Abijah had waited patiently for him twelve years. Then he had
returned a sergeant, and she had married him and followed him with his
regiment, which was that in which Captain Sankey--at that time a young
ensign--served. When the latter's first child was born at Madras there
was a difficulty in obtaining a white nurse, and Mrs. Sankey declared
that she would not trust the child to a native. Inquiries were therefore
made in the regiment, and Sergeant Wolf's wife, who had a great love for
children although childless herself, volunteered to fill the post for a
time. A few months afterward Sergeant Wolf was killed in a fight with a
marauding hill tribe. His widow, instead of returning home and living on
the little pension to which she was entitled at his death, remained in
the service of the Sankeys, who soon came to regard her as invaluable.

She was somewhat rough in her ways and sharp with her tongue; but even
Mrs. Sankey, who was often ruffled by her brusque independence, was
conscious of her value, and knew that she should never obtain another
servant who would take the trouble of the children so entirely off her
hands. She retained, indeed, her privilege of grumbling, and sometimes
complained to her husband that Abijah's ways were really unbearable.
Still she never pressed the point, and Abijah appeared established as a
permanent fixture in the Sankeys' household. She it was who, when, after
leaving the service, Captain Sankey was looking round for a cheap and
quiet residence, had recommended Marsden.

"There is a grand air from the hills," she said, "which will be just the
thing for the children. There's good fishing in the stream for yourself,
captain, and you can't get a quieter and cheaper place in all England. I
ought to know, for I was born upon the moorland but six miles away from
it, and should have be