“O, yes, mamma. Aunt Letty Perkins wondered, the day after the baby was born, if there would not be a donation visit.”
Mamma’s sweet face flushed.
“We have managed so far,” she said; “and everything has gone very pleasantly. Papa is well loved, and we have a delightful home. This great old house and garden are worth a good deal. But I am wandering from my text into byways and highways. I feel that I should sometimes like to have a friend to talk to who would be a sort of second self—”
“O, mamma take me!” I cried.
“I have always wanted to be like an elder sister to my girls as they grew to womanhood.”
I wanted to cry, and I was resolved not to. Mamma’s tone was so sweet that it went to my heart. But to stop myself, I laughed, and exclaimed,—
“Fan would say that your hands would be pretty full if you were going to be a sister to each one of us. Or you would have to be divided into infinitesimal pieces.”
“And fourteen girls might not be desirable, if their father was a clergyman,” she answered, smilingly.
“So, let us be the best of friends, mamma, dearest, and you shall tell me your troubles. It is being so poor, for one, I know.”
“Yes, dear. Poverty is not always a delightful guest. Last evening we were resolving ways and means, and papa proposed to give up the magazines, and be very careful about his journeys. But I cannot bear to have him pinch. And, you see, if we took these boys, the extra living would not cost us anything to speak of. Ten weeks would be—two hundred dollars.”