My Household [pp. 143-148]

Mr HOUSEHOLD.
for Athalia, we left her sitting by the window
patching-she always had a great deal of that
to do.
At the market the air was made fragrant
and the stalls bright by pots of gay-colored
fuchsias and geraniums exposed for sale, which,
with my darlings' cheery conversation, made
my walk a delightful recreation to me. As we
were returning home the boys stopped to watch
a procession and listen to the band music, so I
went on alone. Over the slope which led to
the house, up the stairs, thlroughl the dark hall,
I kept thinking of my angel boy, Edward-ah!
when did I not think of him?-and not until
my hand was on the knob did the sound of
voices arrest my steps. So seldom people came
to our house that it startled me, and then I
stood still to listen.
"It was right to assist your sister when the
boys were small," I recognized Wade Logan's
wife in the voice of the speaker, "but you do
yourself great injustice to apply your earnings
to the same use now."
"I have thought of that," answered my sister,
and it seemed as if she were choking back a
sob. "Until Norman graduated it was plainly
my duty to make every sacrifice in my power for
them; but gradually I learned that they do not
appreciate my labors as they do their mothler's.
I ought not to expect it, and yet the knowledge
makes me consider whether there is not something due to myself."
"It should be no question with you. You
have spent the best years of youth in their
service; you have helped them to advantages
you could never have, and now that youth is
passing, you see foreshadowed the time when
they will consider you an incumbrance."
"I do see it," answered Athlalia in a voice
mournfully even. "They already talk of a time
coming when they shlall occupy some snug little
house with only their mother, and yet they are
good boys, and have done well to get through
with the amount of studying they have when
they are so poor."
"You mean that you and their mother have
done well," interrupted Mrs. Logan energetically.
"They have done just what other boys do, no
more. You have struggled unceasingly with
penury and much work that they might have
their time. True, they have used it, but wealth
could have given no more hours and no less
care. You have watched Norman's progress
from childhood to the threshold of manhood.
He has now an education as good as the majority of young men, and it is not required that
you shall continue this life of self-sacrifice until
health and spirits are gone forever. God gives
us a certain amount of strength, but it is to be
used like other good gifts-with judgment.
Thrown recklessly away it will never return;
and is it not better, after you have nobly toiled
in self-forgetfulness for more than ten years, to
manifest a reasonable regard for yourself?"
"But how can I disappoint the boys merely
to save a portion of my earnings for my own
use? Norman is not able to go to college, nor
Hugh to school without my continued exertion."
"Long before you were as old as Norman is
now," interrupted Mrs. Logan, "you were work ing for them. So long you have done it that
they have ceased to regard the source of their
comfort and supply, and whlenever they can get
along without you will regard you as a clog, to
their advancement."
"It is n't natural that they should feel the
affection for me that they do for their mother, I
suppose."
"And this is why you should make some
provision for yourself."
The feeling of indignation which I had been
nursing against Mrs. Logan began to give way
to sober reflection. I walked on tiptoe back
through the entry, and opening a door which
led into a kind of lumber closet, sat down on an
empty flour barrel to think. Had I been so
selfish for my darling children that I had all
these years been wronging my sister? My
mind went back through the decade that she
had been with me. From the high-spirited,
blithe young girl with joyful hopes of the future,
she had grown to a thoughtful, care-worn, prematurely old woman. She had given the best
years of her life to my family, and I had required it. I had even been jealous of the few
dollars which went, here and there, to supply
her own wardrobe. It had seemed to me that,
by assiduous patching, she might have sometimes made her clothes last longer, thereby
replenishing those of the boys sooner, for what
did it signify how we fared so they were provided? And the boys considered themselves
entitled to this labor. So completely had I
taught them that our duty was their interest,
they accepted the years, the life given to their
service, as they might have done an inheritance
from a deceased parent. This donating of one's
entire existence to the support of others had
been of no moral or religious benefit to the
receivers.
I would not have wronged one child to advance another. Dearly beloved as my Edward
was, I never thought of giving him advantages
at the expense of his brothers, and yet I had
unjustly exacted of my sister the relinquishment
of every enjoyment or opportunity the young
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