Mothers’ work.
“Ain’t the world hard enough without fightin’ babies, I want to know? I hate to see a woman that don’t want to rock her own baby, and is contriving ways all the time to shirk the care of it. Why, if all the world was that way, there would be no sense in Scriptur’. ‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you,’ the Bible says, takin’ for granted that mothers were made to comfort children and give them good times when they are little.”
The mother is every woman.
“There’s no saying,” said Miss Mehitable, “you never know what you may find in the odd corners of an old maid’s heart, when you fairly look into them. There are often unused hoards of maternal affection enough to set up an orphan asylum; but it’s like iron filings and a magnet,—you must try them with a live child, and if there is anything in ’em, you’ll find it out. That little object,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Tina, “made an instant commotion in the dust and rubbish of my forlorn old garret, brought to light a deal that I thought had gone to the moles and the bats long ago. She will do me good, I can feel, with her little pertnesses, and her airs and fancies. If you could know how chilly and lonesome an old house gets sometimes, particularly in autumn, when the equinoctial storm is brewing! A lively child is a godsend, even if she turns the whole house topsy-turvy.”
Individuality.
Tina had one of those rebellious heads of curls that every breeze takes liberties with, and that have to be looked after, and watched, and restrained. Esther’s satin bands of hair could pass through a whirlwind and not lose their gloss. It is curious how character runs even to the minutest thing,—the very hairs of our head are numbered by it,—Esther, always and in everything self-poised, thoughtful, reflective; Tina, the child of every wandering influence, tremulously alive to every new excitement, a wind-harp for every air of heaven to breathe upon.
A woman’s view.