"If it be His good pleasure to remove him, I will not murmur.
He will be safer _there_ than here." "Oh, my poor, poor boy!" sobbed Mrs.Howland.

"My poor, poor boy! To think that he should come to this?
Oh, it was wrong to send him off as he was sent! to punish him so severely for a little thing.
Heaven knows, he had suffered enough, unjustly, without having this added!" "Esther!" exclaimed Mr.Howland, "this from you!" The distressed mother, in the anguish of her mind, had given utterance to her feelings, with scarce a thought as to who was her auditor.

The sternly uttered words of her husband subdued her into silence.
"I did not expect this from you, Esther," continued Mr.Howland, severely, "and at such a time." And he stood looking down upon the mother's pale face with a rebuking expression of countenance.

Mrs.Howland endured his gaze only for a few moments, and then buried her face in the bed-clothes.
Her husband, as his eyes remained fixed upon her form, saw that it was agitated by slight convulsions, and he knew that she was striving to suppress the sobs in which her heart was seeking an utterance.

For a little while he stood looking at her, and then retired, without speaking, from the chamber, and sought the one where the physician was yet engaged with Andrew.