favorite name for me, and mother would look up and greet me with the
same loving smile that was never wanting on her dear face.

On the stairs I generally came upon Carrie, coming down from her
little room.

"How are the little Thornes?" I would ask her, cheerfully; but
by-and-by I left off asking her about them. At first she used to shrug
her shoulders and shake her head in a sort of disconsolate fashion,
or answered indifferently: "Oh, much as usual, thank you." But once
she returned, quite pettishly:

"Why do you ask after those odious children, Esther? Why cannot you
let me forget them for a few hours? If we are brickmakers, we need
not always be telling the tales of our bricks." She finished with a
sort of weary tone in her tired voice, and after that I let the
little Thornes alone.

What happy evenings those were! Not that we were idle, though--"the
saints forbid," as old Biddy used to say. When tea was over, mother
and I betook ourselves to the huge mending basket; sometimes Carrie
joined us, when she was not engaged in district work, and then her
clever fingers made the work light for us.

Then there were Jack's lessons to superintend, and sometimes I had
to help Dot with his drawing, or copy out papers for Uncle Geoffrey:
then by-and-by Dot had to be taken upstairs, and there were little
things to do for mother when Carrie was too tired or busy to do them.
Mother was Carrie's charge. As Dot and Jack were mine, it was a fair
division of labor, only somehow Carrie had always so much to do.