Once I said to her: "Mother, when Laddie goes we'll just have to make it up to each other the best we can, won't we ?" "Oh my soul, child!" she cried, staring at me so surprised-like.

"Why, how unspeakably selfish I have been! No little lost sheep ever ran this farm so desolate as you will be without your brother.

Forgive me baby, and come here!" Gee, but we did cry it out together! The God she believed in has wiped away her tears long ago; this minute I can scarcely see the paper for mine.

If you could call anything happiness, that was mixed with feeling like that, why, then, we were happy about Laddie.

But from things I heard father and mother say, I knew they could have borne his going away, and felt a trifle better than they did.