Here the children, who had finished eating their suppers, came round the
bed, to listen to what their mother was saying. She was tired of
speaking, for she was very weak; but she took their little hands, as they
laid them on the bed and joining them all together, she said, "Bless you,
dears; bless you; love and help one another all you can. Good night!--
good-bye!"

Mary took the children away to their bed, for she saw that their mother
was too ill to say more; but Mary did not herself know how ill she was.
Her mother never spoke rightly afterwards, but talked in a confused way
about some debts, and one in particular, which she owed to a
schoolmistress for Mary's schooling; and then she charged Mary to go and
pay it, because she was not able to GO IN with it. At the end of the
week she was dead and buried, and the orphans were left alone in their
cabin.

The two youngest girls, Peggy and Nancy, were six and seven years old.
Edmund was not yet nine, but he was a stout-grown, healthy boy, and well
disposed to work. He had been used to bring home turf from the bog on
his back, to lead cart-horses, and often to go on errands for gentlemen's
families, who paid him a sixpence or a shilling, according to the
distance which he went, so that Edmund, by some or other of these little
employments, was, as he said, likely enough to earn his bread; and he
told Mary to have a good heart, for that he should every year grow able
to do more and more, and that he should never forget his mother's words
when she last gave him her blessing, and joined their hands all together.

As for Peggy and Nancy, it was little that they could do; but they were
good children, and Mary, when she considered that so much depended upon