'mind you make her use her voice. Don't give her her dinner,
unless she asks for it. Treat her severely in that way, poor little
soul, because it's for her own good.'

"It was all very well for _him_ to say that, but it was impossible
for _me_ to do it. The dear child, ma'am, seemed to get used to her
misfortune, except when we tried to make her speak. It was the saddest,
prettiest sight in the world to see how patiently and bravely she bore
with her hard lot from the first. As she grew better in her health, she
kept up her reading and writing quite cleverly with my husband and me;
and all her nice natural cheerful ways come back to her just the same
as ever. I've read or heard somewhere, sir, about God's goodness in
tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. I don't know who said that first;
but it might well have been spoken on account of my own darling little
Mary, in those days. Instead of us being the first to comfort her,
it was she that was first to comfort us. And so she's gone on ever
since--bless her heart! Only treat her kindly, and, in spite of her
misfortune, she's the merriest, happiest little thing--the easiest
pleased and amused, I do believe, that ever lived.

"If we were wrong in not forcing her to speak more than we did, I must
say this much for me and my husband, that we hadn't the heart to make
her miserable and keep on tormenting her from morning to night, when
she was always happy and comfortable if we would only let her alone. We
tried our best for some time to do what the gentleman told us; but it's
so hard--as you've found I dare say, ma'am--not to end by humoring them
you love! I never see the tear in her eye, except when we forced her to
speak to us; and then she always cried, and was fretful and out of sorts
for the whole day. It seemed such a dreadful difficulty and pain to her
to say only two or three words; and the shocking husky moaning voice
that sounded somehow as if it didn't belong to her, never changed. My
husband first gave up worrying her to speak. He practiced her with her
book and writing, but let her have her own will in everything else; and
he teached her all sorts of tricks on the cards, for amusement, which
was a good way of keeping her going with her reading and her pen
pleasantly, by reason, of course, of him and her being obliged to put
down everything they had to say to each other on a little slate that we
bought for her after she got well.

"It was Mary's own notion, if yo