'growing up in sin and misery; and the world goes on, and people eat and
drink and are merry, for it is none of their business, and yet it is not
the will of the Father that one of these little ones should perish.'

I had learned much from my father, but still more from my mother.
Uncle Max had called her a good woman, but she was more than that:
she possessed one of those rare unselfish natures that cannot remain
satisfied with their own personal happiness: they wish to include
the whole world. She wanted to inculcate in me her own spirit of
self-sacrifice. I can remember some of her short, trenchant sentences
now.

'Never mind happiness: that is God's gift to a few: do your duty.'

'If you have loved your fellow-creatures sufficiently you will not be
afraid to die. A good conscience will smooth your pillow.'

And once, in her last illness, when Charlie asked if she were
comfortable, 'Not very, but I shall soon be quite comfortable, for I
shall hope to forget in heaven how little I have done, after all, here;
and yet I always wanted to help others.'

Oh, how good she was! And Charlie was good too, after the fashion of
young men: not altogether thoughtless, full of the promptings of his kind
heart; but Uncle Max was right when he said his last illness had ripened
him: it was not the old careless Charlie who had wooed Lesbia who lay
there: it was another and a better Charlie.

In the old days he had rallied me in a brotherly manner on my
old-fashioned, grave ways. 'You are not a modern young lady, Ursie,' he