“Have you any suitable place provided as yet?” asked Mrs. McElroy.
“Not decisively,” answered the widow.
“It could not be expected that you would so soon,” answered Mrs. McElroy. “Now we have a plan for you, which may be to our mutual advantage. The little community dwelling within these brick walls is a very social one, and the general’s time and my own is so much occupied, that my children suffer for a mother’s care. You are exactly the person we need to take the oversight of them. Your own children are a credit to you; they show that you have just the qualities of mind and heart for such a position. Now, if you will look a little after my children’s training, you will take a burden from my hands, and a load of anxiety from my mind, and between us both, I think we can manage so as not to be overcharged.”
“But Robert–” began Mrs. Jones, hesitatingly.
“The general has taken a great fancy to him, and says if he can have him he will make something of him; and what my husband undertakes he never does by halves. Robert would have the best of advantages, and be under your own eye.”
Mrs. Jones’s emotions were too great for words. This unexpected provision for herself and boy seemed truly providential. She might go the 263 world over and not meet with such delicate and appreciative treatment. Still she hesitated. Her life in the squatter’s cabin through so many years of deprivation and poverty placed her, in her own consciousness, in such painful contrast to the courtly and elegant Mrs. McElroy, that she felt diffident about accepting so responsible a trust. And she understood children well enough to know that the offspring of the rich often look down on those in humbler circumstances. Would the general’s children respect her as they should, in order for her to assume such a relation towards them as their mother wished? These thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, and, in justice to them as well as herself, she felt that she would like to have that point put to rest. She was a woman of straightforward good sense, and therefore decided to be frank in the matter, and asked,–
“But would the arrangement be agreeable to your children, madam?”
Mrs. McElroy had foreseen this, and was prepared with an answer. She rang the bell, and black Nancy appeared.
“Send Alice and Willie here,” she said; and in a moment the brother and sister came running in.
“Children,” said their mother, “I’ve been trying 264 to persuade Mrs. Jones to stay with us, and take charge of you. How would you like that?”