"I taught Arthur to yield his natural rights in his own property to them. It was a lesson I was desirous early to teach him, who was in danger of becoming selfish from always having played alone.
"Children have quick instincts. Little Edgar and Harry soon learned to love me, whom they knew to be their friend; they would put their arms about my neck, and call me 'dear mother.' This troubled me; it seemed as if it must pain _her_. I never taught them to call me so. I never taught my child to call Stahle father. It seemed to me this should not be forced, but should flow out spontaneously; even then I almost shrank from accepting the sacred appellation. I talked to them often of their own mother, lest years should efface the indistinct recollections of infancy. I learned from their childish prattle, that she was 'always sick.' I could readily believe it, for they had inherited her fragility; also that she 'taught them a little prayer,' which they 'could not remember,' though I repeated several which childhood oftenest lisps.
"They said mother's hair was not curly, like mine, and that she was 'ever so much little-er'; and that she coughed very bad, and could not play with them much. Consumption then was the enemy I was to ward off; so I protected their little lungs with flannel. I dressed them warmly, and then tried to inure them to all weathers, as I had always done my own child.
"I found a sort of quiet happiness in thus attempting to perform my duty, for I really loved the children, who were quite as good as they could be, after having passed through so many different hands. We had been some time married when all the little ones were seized with scarlatina, and after a painful prostration by it, and a partial convalescence, the doctor advised a change of air, and we accordingly commenced all needful preparations for the journey.
"Up to this time I had not been into public with Stahle; even in my first married life I had never done this, (why should I have done so when _home_ was Paradise?) and now--what availed change of place, when, go where I might, the arrow was still quivering in my heart?
"Occasionally we had callers, business friends of Stahle's, to whom he requested me to be, and to whom I was, punctiliously civil.