The sorrowful widow was so fond of her little Henry, and the uncertainty of life was so burnt into her now, that she could hardly bear him out of her sight.

Yet her love was of the true maternal stamp; not childish and self-indulgent.

She kept him from school, for fear he should be brought home dead to her; but she gave her own mind with zeal to educate him.
Nor was she unqualified.

If she had less learning than school-masters, she knew better how to communicate what she did know to a budding mind.
She taught him to read fluently, and to write beautifully; and she coaxed him, as only a woman can, over the dry elements of music and arithmetic.

She also taught him dancing and deportment, and to sew on a button.