part of man or beast arouses him to action. When he was only a little
over three years old, I found him carefully mending some windfall robins'
eggs, cracked by their tumble, with bits of rubber sticking-plaster, then
putting them hopefully back into the nest, with an admonition to the
anxious parents to "sit very still and don't stwatch." While last summer
he unfortunately saw a chicken decapitated over at the farm barn, and, in
Martha Corkle's language, "the way he wound a bit o' paper round its poor
neck to stop its bleedin' went straight to my stummick, so it did, Mrs.
Evan;" for be it said here that Martha has fulfilled my wildest
expectations, and whereas, as queen of the kitchen, she was a trifle
unexpected and uncomfortable, as Mrs. Timothy Saunders, now comfortably
settled in the new cottage above the stable at the north corner of the
hayland, she is a veritable guardian angel, ready to swoop down with
strong wings at a moment's notice, in sickness or health, day or night,
and seize the nursery helm.

It is owing to her that I have never been obliged to have a nursemaid
under my feet or tagging after the boys, to the ruin of their
independence. For the first few years Effie, whose fiery locks have not
yet found their affinity, helped me, but now merely sees to buttons,
strings, and darns.

I found out long ago that those who get the best return from their flower
gardens were those who kept no gardeners, and it is the same way with the
child garden; those who are too overbusy, irresponsible, ignorant, or
rich to do without the orthodox nurse, never can know precisely what they
lose. To watch a baby untrammelled with clothes, dimple, glow, and expand
in its bath, is in an intense personal degree like watching, early of a
June morning, the first opening bud of a rose that you have coaxed and
raised from a mere cutting. You hoped and believed that it would be fair