But God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. She knew that she had
within her the living source of other cares. She knew that there was
to be created for her another subject of weal or woe, of unutterable
joy or despairing sorrow, as God in his mercy might vouchsafe to her.
At first this did but augment her grief! To be the mother of a poor
infant, orphaned before it was born, brought forth to the sorrows of
an ever desolate hearth, nurtured amidst tears and wailing, and then
turned adrift into the world without the aid of a father's care!
There was at first no joy in this.

By degrees, however, her heart became anxious for another object,
and, before its birth, the stranger was expected with all the
eagerness of a longing mother. Just eight months after the father's
death a second John Bold was born, and if the worship of one creature
can be innocent in another, let us hope that the adoration offered
over the cradle of the fatherless infant may not be imputed as a sin.

It will not be worth our while to define the character of the child,
or to point out in how far the faults of the father were redeemed
within that little breast by the virtues of the mother. The baby, as
a baby, was all that was delightful, and I cannot foresee that it
will be necessary for us to inquire into the facts of his after-life.
Our present business at Barchester will not occupy us above a year
or two at the furthest, and I will leave it to some other pen to
produce, if necessary, the biography of John Bold the Younger.

But, as a baby, this baby was all that could be desired. This fact
no one attempted to deny. "Is he not delightful?" she would say to
her father, looking up into his face from her knees, her lustrous
eyes overflowing with soft tears, her young face encircled by her