perhaps that was all well and good; but he wanted her to love her child
less, and that was an evil wish. One day, he gave way to his temper, and
cursed and swore at Gregory, who had got into some mischief, as children
will; my mother made some excuse for him; my father said it was hard
enough to have to keep another man's child, without having it perpetually
held up in its naughtiness by his wife, who ought to be always in the
same mind that he was; and so from little they got to more; and the end
of it was, that my mother took to her bed before her time, and I was born
that very day. My father was glad, and proud, and sorry, all in a
breath; glad and proud that a son was born to him; and sorry for his poor
wife's state, and to think how his angry words had brought it on. But he
was a man who liked better to be angry than sorry, so he soon found out
that it was all Gregory's fault, and owed him an additional grudge for
having hastened my birth. He had another grudge against him before long.
My mother began to sink the day after I was born. My father sent to
Carlisle for doctors, and would have coined his heart's blood into gold
to save her, if that could have been; but it could not. My aunt Fanny
used to say sometimes, that she thought that Helen did not wish to live,
and so just let herself die away without trying to take hold on life; but
when I questioned her, she owned that my mother did all the doctors bade
her do, with the same sort of uncomplaining patience with which she had
acted through life. One of her last requests was to have Gregory laid in
her bed by my side, and then she made him take hold of my little hand.
Her husband came in while she was looking at us so, and when he bent
tenderly over her to ask her how she felt now, and seemed to gaze on us
two little half-brothers, with a grave sort of kindness, she looked up in
his face and smiled, almost her first smile at him; and such a sweet
smile! as more besides aunt Fanny have said. In an hour she was dead.
Aunt Fanny came to live with us. It was the best thing that could be
done. My father would have been glad to return to his old mode of