melodeon, or the violin or piano for dances.

Mother used to say: "Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the strawberries,
your father cannot help." "John, you must milk next year for I haven't
the time and it would spoil your father's hands."

All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel shirts,
except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white ones with
starched bosoms. He was very particular about them and mother used to
stitch and stitch on the pleats, and press and press the bosoms and
collar and cuffs, sometimes late at night.

Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new dresses
for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was always taking
care of the babies; and father was happy and well and handsome. But
we children never thought much about it until once, after father had
mortgaged the farm, there was going to be a sociable in Temperance
village. Mother could not go as Jenny had whooping-cough and Mark had
just broken his arm, and when she was tying father's necktie, the last
thing before he started, he said: "I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a
little about YOUR appearance and YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a
man like me."

Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I looked at
her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a minute I was ever
so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It has always stayed there,
although I admired my handsome father and was proud of him because he
was so talented; but now that I am older and have thought about things,
my love for mother is different from what it used to be. Father was
always the favorite when we were little, he was so interesting, and
I wonder sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and
better than we do those who are just good and patient. If so it seems
very cruel.

As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my
pink parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition to do
something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy to a child.
I had not been to school then, or read George Macdonald, so I did not
know that "Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil."

Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and everybody said
how wonderful they were, and bought them straight away; and she took
care of a blind father and two brothers, and traveled wherever she
wished. It comes back to me now, that summer when I was ten an