It is a blessing to have any one to whom Mary and Blanche may so entirely be trusted.

But for you--" "It is my own fault," repeated Ethel.
"I don't think it is quite all your own fault," said Margaret, "and that is the difficulty.

I know dear mamma thought Miss Winter an excellent governess for the little ones, but hardly up to you, and she saw that you worried and fidgeted each other, so, you know, she used to keep the teaching of you a good deal in her own hands." "I did not know that was the reason," said Ethel, overpowered by the recollection of the happy morning's work she had often done in that very room, when her mother had not been equal to the bustle of the whole school-room.

That watchful, protecting, guarding, mother's love, a shadow of Providence, had been round them so constantly on every side, that they had been hardly conscious of it till it was lost to them.
"Was it not like her ?" said Margaret, "but now, my poor Ethel, I don't think it would be right by you or by Miss Winter, to take you out of the school-room.

I think it would grieve her." "I would not do that for the world." "Especially after her kind nursing of me, and even, with more reason, it would not be becoming in us to make changes.