were pretty girls at Bruges with whom I could fancy that I was in
love; and I had been removed from the real misery of school. But
as to my future life I had not even an aspiration. Now and again
there would arise a feeling that it was hard upon my mother that
she should have to do so much for us, that we should be idle while
she was forced to work so constantly; but we should probably have
thought more of that had she not taken to work as though it were
the recognised condition of life for an old lady of fifty-five.

Then, by degrees, an established sorrow was at home among us. My
brother was an invalid, and the horrid word, which of all words were
for some years after the most dreadful to us, had been pronounced.
It was no longer a delicate chest, and some temporary necessity
for peculiar care,--but consumption! The Bruges doctor had said
so, and we knew that he was right. From that time forth my mother's
most visible occupation was that of nursing. There were two sick
men in the house, and hers were the hands that tended them. The
novels went on, of course. We had already learned to know that they
would be forthcoming at stated intervals,--and they always were
forthcoming. The doctor's vials and the ink-bottle held equal
places in my mother's rooms. I have written many novels under many
circumstances; but I doubt much whether I could write one when my
whole heart was by the bedside of a dying son. Her power of dividing
herself into two parts, and keeping her intellect by itself clear
from the troubles of the world, and fit for the duty it had to do,
I never saw equalled. I do not think that the writing of a novel
is the most difficult task which a man may be called upon to do;
but it is a task that may be supposed to demand a spirit fairly
at ease. The work of doing it with a troubled spirit killed Sir
Walter Scott. My mother went through it unscathed in strength,