her quiet home to devote herself to
their interests; and if they had all been wise and good and thoughtful,
they would not have needed to be reminded so frequently of her
self-denial as Aunt Elsie seemed to think necessary. But few children
are so wise, or good, or thoughtful as they ought to be; and there were
oftentimes secret murmurings, and once or twice during the first year of
her stay there had been open rebellion among them.

It could hardly have been otherwise. No middle-aged woman unaccustomed
to the care of a family, whose heart had never been softened by the
helpless loveliness of little children of her own, could have filled the
place of a mother, wise, firm, and tender, all at once; and so for a
time their household was not a happy one. Their father left his
children to the care of their aunt, as he had always left them to the
care of their mother; and if an appeal from any decision of hers were
made to him, it very seldom availed anything.

It was not so bad for the elder ones. They were healthy, good-tempered
girls, who had companions and interests out of the home-circle; and they
soon learned to yield to or evade what was distasteful in their aunt's
rule. With the little children she was always lenient. It was the
sickly, peevish little Christie who suffered most. More than any of the
rest, more than all the rest put together, she missed her mother: she
missed her patient care and sympathy when she was ill, and her firm yet
gentle management amid the wayward fretfulness that illness brought upon
her. Night after night did her weary little head slumber on a pillow
which her tears had wet. Morning after morning did she wake up to the
remembrance of her loss, with a burst of bitter weeping, angry at or
indifferent to all her aunt's attempts to console her or win her love.
No wonder that her aunt lost patience at last, calling the child peevish
and wilful, and altogether unlovable, and declaring that she had more
trouble and unhappiness with her than with all her sisters put together.

And, indeed, so she had. She rather enjoyed the excitement of keeping a
firm hand over the elder ones, and she soon learned to have patience
with the noise and heedlessness of the little ones. But the peevishness
and wayward fancies of a nervous, excitable child, whom weakness made
irritable, and an over-active imagination made dreams, she could neither
understand nor endure; and so the first year after the mothe