Their mother knew, as it were, by
electrically swift intuition, the desires and the pains which she
anticipated and relieved. She seemed to dread a complaint from one of
them more than the loss of her soul. Everything in her children did
honor to their mother's training. Their threefold life, seemingly
one life, called up vague, fond thoughts; it was like a vision of the
dreamed-of bliss of a better world. And the three, so attuned to each
other, lived in truth such a life as one might picture for them at first
sight--the ordered, simple, and regular life best suited for a child's
education.

Both children rose an hour after daybreak and repeated a short prayer,
a habit learned in their babyhood. For seven years the sincere petition
had been put up every morning on their mother's bed, and begun and ended
by a kiss. Then the two brothers went through their morning toilet as
scrupulously as any pretty woman; doubtless they had been trained in
habits of minute attention to the person, so necessary to health of
body and mind, habits in some sort conducive to a sense of wellbeing.
Conscientiously they went through their duties, so afraid were they
lest their mother should say when she kissed them at breakfast-time,
"My darling children, where can you have been to have such black
finger-nails already?" Then the two went out into the garden and shook
off the dreams of the night in the morning air and dew, until sweeping
and dusting operations were completed, and they could learn their
lessons in the sitting-room until their mother joined them. But although
it was understood that they must not go to their mother's room before a
certain hour, they peeped in at the door continually; and these morning
inroads, made in defiance of the original compact, were delicious
moments for all three. Marie sprang upon the bed to put his arms around
his idolized mother, and Louis, kneeling by the pillow, took her hand
in his. Then came inquiries, anxious as a lover's, followed by angelic
laughter, passionate childish kisses, eloquent silences, lisping words,
and the little ones' stories interrupted and resumed by a kiss, stories
seldom finished, though the listener's interest never failed.

"Have you been industrious?" their mother would ask, but in tones
so sweet and so kindly that she seemed ready to pity laziness as a
misfortune, and to glance through tears at the child who was satisfied
with himself.

She knew that the thought of pleasi