"She would have cared for your welfare. You had better think of her as wishing that her children should always be very dear to their father, as desirous that they should not set themselves against his wishes, and vex and displease him."
"Then I suppose I'd better give you Johnnie's letter," said Barbara, "because he is so angry—quite furious, really." She took out a letter, and put it into Emily's hand. "Will you burn it when you go home? but, Mrs. Walker, will you read it first, because then you'll see that Johnnie does love father—and dear mamma too."
Voices were heard now and steps on the gravel. Barbara took up her eyeglass, and moved forward; then, when she saw Justina, she retreated to Emily's side with a gesture of discomfiture and almost of disgust.
"Any step-mother at all," she continued, "Johnnie says, he hates the thought of; but that one—Oh!"
"What a lesson for me!" thought Emily; and she put the letter in her pocket.
"It's very rude," whispered Barbara; "but you mustn't mind that;" and with a better grace than could have been expected she allowed Justina to kiss her, and the two ladies walked back through the fields, the younger children accompanying them nearly all the way home.
CHAPTER XXVI.
MRS. BRANDON ASKS A QUESTION.
"Your baby-days flowed in a much-troubled channel;
I see you as then in your impotent strife,
A tight little bundle of wailing and flannel,
Perplexed with that newly-found fardel call'd life."
Locker.