Then her heart would fail her, for she loved him fondly, even in his rage, and her penalty would be mild indeed. Often she blamed herself for his petty waywardness, and feeling her slackening hand he would take the bit between his teeth, coltlike; but he was a good lad, Robin was, and, like his mother, tender-hearted, for all his spirit, and as quick to be sorry as to be wrong. When they had made it up, crying in each other's arms, Letitia would say to him:
"I'm not your mother, but I love you, and I've got no other little boy."
It was thus Letitia kept our home for us, tranquil and spotless as of old; and if at first I chose more often than was kind to sit rather among my bottles and my books and instruments, leaving her Robin and the evening-lamp, it was through no fault or negligence of hers I did it, for, however bright my hearth might glow, however tended by her gentle hands, its flame was but the ruddy symbol to me of a past whose spirit never could return.
"Who is Miss Primrose?" strangers in Grassy Ford would ask.
"She's a sort of relative," the reply would be, "and the doctor's house-keeper."
For the woman who keeps still sacred and beautiful another woman's home, in all the language, in all our wordiness, there is no other name.