eyes there were soon six more wet enough to need a handkerchief.

Her gait was heavy and awkward, and her face seemed as though it had been
hewn out of coarse wood, so that it was a proper face to frighten
children; even when she was young they said that her appearance was too
like a man and devoid of charms, and for that reason my father never
heeded her love for him; but her eyes were like open windows, and out of
them looked everything that was good and kind and loving and true, like
angels within. For the sake of those eyes you forgot all else; all that
was rough in her, and her wide nose with the deep dent just in the
middle, and such hair on her lip as many a young stripling might envy
her.

And Sebald Kresz knew very well what he was about when he took to wife
Maud Im Hoff when he was between sixty and seventy years of age; and she
had nothing to look forward to in life as she stood at the altar with
him, but to play the part of nurse to a sickly perverse old man. But to
Maud it seemed as fair a lot to take care of a fellow-creature as it is
to many another to be nursed and cherished; and it was the reward of her
faithful care that she could keep the old man from the clutch of Death
for full ten years longer. After his decease she was left a well-to-do
widow; but instead of taking thought for herself she at once entered on a
life of fresh care, for she undertook the duty of filling the place of
mother to us three orphans.

As I grew up she would often instruct me in her kind voice, which was as
deep as the bass pipe of an organ, that she had set three aims before her
in bringing us up, namely: to make us good and Godfearing; to teach us to
agree among ourselves so that each should be ready to give everything up
to the others; and to make our young days as happy as possible. How far