And the horn book I learned on my poor mother’s knee.
In truth, I suspect little else do we learn
From this great book of life, which so shrewdly we turn,
Saving how to apply, with a good or bad grace,
What we learned in the horn book of childhood.”
—Owen Meredith.
Judith’s mother sat in her invalid chair before the grate; she looked very pretty to Judith with her hair curling back from her face, and the color of her eyes and cheeks brought out by the becoming wrapper; the firelight shone upon the mother; the fading light in the west shone upon the girl in the bay-window, the yellow head, the blue shoulders bent over the letter she was writing.
“Judith, come and tell me pictures.”
About five o’clock in the afternoon, her mother’s weariest-time, Judith often told her mother pictures.