“But most that he wrote was sad; and I am afraid most that he taught the people was sad too, or, at any rate, not hopeful as it ought to be in this beautiful, blessed world, which ‘God so loved’ and loves.  So perhaps it was better for people that papa never preached in any one parish more than three or four years.  Probably God took care to send next a man who would make everybody take courage again.  However, it was very hard for mamma, and very hard for us; although for us there was excitement and fun in getting into new houses and getting acquainted with new people; but the worst thing was that we had very little money, and it used it up so to move from place to place, and buy new things.  I knew all about this before I was ten years old as well as if I had been forty; and by the time I was twelve, I was a perfect little miser of both clothes and money—­I had such a horror of the terrible days, which sometimes came, when we sorely wanted both.

“Early in the spring after I was thirteen—­my birthday was in December—­we went to live in a little place called Maynard’s Mills.  It was a suburban village near the largest manufacturing town in the State.  The other two homes which I could remember had been very small country villages, where none of the people were rich, and only a few attended the Episcopal church.  In Maynard’s Mills there were many rich people, and almost everybody went to our church.  The whole place was owned by Mr. Maynard, Robert’s father.  He had gone out there to live near his mills, and the place was so beautiful that family after family of the rich mill-owners had moved out there.  At first they used to go into town to church; but it was a long drive, cold in winter and hot in summer, and so Mr. Maynard built a beautiful chapel near his house and sent for papa to come and preach in it.  Mr. Maynard had been his classmate in college and loved him very much, just because they were ‘so different,’ papa said, and I think it must have been so, for Mr. Maynard is the merriest man I ever saw.  He laughs as soon as he sees you, whether there is anything to laugh at or not, and he makes you feel just like laughing yourself, simply by asking you how you do.  I never saw papa so happy as he was the day Mr. Maynard’s letter came asking him to go there.

“It was a very kind letter, and the salary, of which Mr. Maynard spoke almost apologetically, saying that it would be increased in a few years as the village grew, was more than twice as large as papa had ever received, and there was a nice parsonage besides.

“We moved in April.  I always associate our moving with blue hepaticas, for I carried a great basketful of them, which I had taken up roots and all, in the woods, the morning we set out; and what should I find under papa’s study window but a great thicket of wild ferns and cornel bushes growing—­just the place for my hepaticas, and I set them out before I went into the house.  The house was very small,