agged; he considered her an excellent
housekeeper; in fact, they were mutually pleased with one another; their
cases were equal; both often thought they might have been worse off, and
neither regretted with any keenness what they had never known.

Sometimes, having much sweetness of nature, it would chance that John
Mortimer's love for his children would overflow in his wife's direction,
on which, as if to recall him to himself, she would say, not coldly, but
sensibly, "Don't be silly, John dear." But if he expressed gratitude on
her account, as he sometimes did when she had an infant of a few days
old in her arms, if his soul appeared to draw nearer to her then, and
he inclined to talk of deeper and wider things than they commonly spoke
of, she was always distinctly aggrieved. A tear perhaps would twinkle in
her eye. She was affected by his relief after anxiety, and his gratitude
for her safety; but she did not like to feel affected, and brought him
back to the common level of their lives as soon as possible.

So they lived together in peace and prosperity till they had seven
children, and then, one fine autumn, Mrs. John Mortimer persuaded her
father-in-law to do up the house, so far as papering and painting were
concerned. She then persuaded John to take a tour, and went herself to
the sea-side with her children.

From this journey she did not return. Their father had but just gone
quite out of her reach when the children took scarlet fever, and she
summoned their grandfather to her aid. In this, her first great anxiety
and trouble, for some of them were extremely ill, all that she had found
most oppressive in his character appeared to suit her. He pleased and
satisfied her; but the children were hardly better, so that he had time
to consider what it was that surprised him in her, when she fell ill
herself, and before her husband reached home had died in his father's
arms.

All the children recovered. John Mortimer took them home, and for the
first six months after her death he was miserably disconsolate. It was
not because they had been happy, but because they had been so very
comfortable. He aggravated himself into thinking that he could have
loved her more if he had only known how soon he should lose her; he
looked at all their fine healthy joyous children, and grieved to think
that now they were his only.

But the time came when he knew that he could have loved her much more if
she would have let him; and wh