"Willy, you must not say that God made Dan an idiot. God is very good, and I am very bad. I made Dan an idiot."
The stare with which Willy heard this was too much for his mother. She rushed up-stairs and threw herself upon the bed, where she was heard long afterward sobbing as if her heart would break.
"Father," said Willy, timidly, but curiously, "did you make mother cry too?"
"Yes, Willy, I did. It is all my doing."
"Then I think you are very wicked."
"So I am—very wicked. Take care that you are not. Take care you are never wicked."
"That I will. I can't bear that mother should cry."
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
Janet did all she could to arrest the ruin which all saw to be inevitable. Her great piece of success was the training she gave to her eldest daughter, little Sally. By the time she was twelve years old, she was the most efficient person in the house. Without her, they could hardly have kept their last remaining cow; and many a time she set her mother at liberty to attend upon her father and protect him, when otherwise the children must have engrossed her.
There was no cow-boy now; and her mother too often filled the place of the laborer, when the sowing or reaping season would otherwise have passed away unused. It was a thing unheard of in the district that a woman should work in the fields; but what else could be done? Raven's wasted and trembling limbs were unequal to the work alone; and, little as he could do at best, he could always do his best when his wife was helping him. So Sally took care of poor Dan and the four younger ones, and made the oaten bread with Willy's help, and boiled the potatoes, and milked and fed the cow, and knitted, at all spare minutes; for there was no prospect of stockings for any body, in the bitter winter, but from the knitting done at home. The children had learned to be thankful now, when they could eat their oat-bread and potatoes in peace. They seldom had any thing else; and they wanted nothing else when they could eat that without terror.