she made more use of her hands in speech than was common among people of
British race.

Her goodness seems to me to have been instinctive, and to have needed
neither thought nor effort. Her faults, as I think of her, were mostly such
as arise from excess of loving and of noble moods. She would be lavish
where she had better have been merely generous, or rash where some would
have lacked even the commoner qualities of courage. Indeed, as to this, she
feared no one--neither my grave father nor the grimmest of inquisitive
committees of Friends.

As I came she set those large, childlike eyes on me, and opening the lower
half-door, cried out:

"I could scarce wait for thee! I wish I could have gone with thee, Hugh;
and was it dreadful? Come, let us see thy little book. And did they praise
thy reading? Didst thou tell them I taught thee? There are girls, I hear,"
and so on--a way she had of asking many questions without waiting for a
reply.

As we chatted we passed through the hall, where tall mahogany chairs stood
dark against the whitewashed walls, such as were in all the rooms. Joyous
at escape from school, and its confinement of three long, weary hours, from
eight to eleven, I dropped my mother's hand, and, running a little, slid
down the long entry over the thinly sanded floor, and then slipping, came
down with a rueful countenance, as nature, foreseeing results, meant that a
boy should descend when his legs fail him. My mother sat down on a settle,
and spread out both palms toward me, laughing, and crying out:

"So near are joy and grief, my friends, in this world of sorrow."