much ill; but I have seen few faces which gave me such pleasure.  I think that she was the wife of a poor clergyman; and I think that clergyman must be one of the Lord’s best watchmen of souls.  The children—­two boys and two girls—­were all under the age of twelve, and the youngest could not speak plainly.  They had had a rare treat; they had been visiting the mountains, and they were talking over all the wonders they had seen with a glow of enthusiastic delight which was to be envied.  Only a word-for-word record would do justice to their conversation; no description could give any idea of it,—­so free, so pleasant, so genial, no interruptions, no contradictions; and the mother’s part borne all the while with such equal interest and eagerness that no one not seeing her face would dream that she was any other than an elder sister.  In the course of the day there were many occasions when it was necessary for her to deny requests, and to ask services, especially from the eldest boy; but no young girl, anxious to please a lover, could have done either with a more tender courtesy.  She had her reward; for no lover could have been more tender and manly than was this boy of twelve.  Their lunch was simple and scanty; but it had the grace of a royal banquet.  At the last, the mother produced with much glee three apples and an orange, of which the children had not known.  All eyes fastened on the orange.  It was evidently a great rarity.  I watched to see if this test would bring out selfishness.  There was a little silence; just the shade of a cloud.  The mother said, “How shall I divide this?  There is one for each of you; and I shall be best off of all, for I expect big tastes from each of you.”

“Oh, give Annie the orange.  Annie loves oranges,” spoke out the oldest boy, with a sudden air of a conqueror, and at the same time taking the smallest and worst apple himself.

“Oh, yes, let Annie have the orange,” echoed the second boy, nine years old.

“Yes, Annie may have the orange, because that is nicer than the apple, and she is a lady, and her brothers are gentlemen,” said the mother, quietly.  Then there was a merry contest as to who should feed the mother with largest and most frequent mouthfuls; and so the feast went on.  Then Annie pretended to want apple, and exchanged thin golden strips of orange for bites out of the cheeks of Baldwins; and, as I sat watching her intently, she suddenly fancied she saw longing in my face, and sprang over to me, holding out a quarter of her orange, and saying, “Don’t you want a taste, too?” The mother smiled, understandingly, when I said, “No, I thank you, you dear, generous little girl; I don’t care about oranges.”

At noon we had a tedious interval of waiting at a dreary station.  We sat for two hours on a narrow platform, which the sun had scorched till it smelt of heat.  The oldest boy—­the little lover—­held the youngest child, and talked to her, while the tired mother closed her eyes and rested.  Now and then he looked over at her, and then back at the baby; and at last he said confidentially to me (for we had become fast friends by this time), “Isn’t it funny, to think that I was ever so small as this baby?  And papa says that then mamma was almost a little girl herself.”