“It’s mighty _quare_ how, in this wonderful city of business and bother, how your little, peaceful sayings, darling aunt! and the songs you sung to the wheel of a winter’s evening, with none but the pusheen-cat, and myself, and a cricket or two to the fore, come into my head, or one of Watts’ hymns, in the very bustle of the town: I often dust the room to ‘Aileen Mavourneen,’ and brush my lady’s hair to ‘Eveleen’s bower,’ played on the chords of my heart. Sometimes, when I draw back the curtain, and shade the light of the pale night-lamp, with my hand, for fear it might wake her—the mistress I mean—for I never lay down until she is asleep: often, when I watch her features, worn with pain, yet so still, and gentle-looking, and see her pale, pink lips, half open, and such a sweet smile on them, I think—the sleeping face differs so from the waking one—that angels must be whispering the joys that will come. When the last dull sleep is ended, aunt, I am sure I should go mad if I thought that dear innocent woman, so tortured in this world, yet so meek in herself, so thoughtful and generous to the poor, so kind in her judgments, so fond to take the sorrows of all who have sorrow into her bosom, and turn them to blessings—I should indeed break my heart, if I believed that, for reading the one book another way, we should never meet in the world that’s to come. I can’t believe it, so there’s enough about it. As I looked at her, the song of ‘The Angels’ Whisper,’ came for a second time into my head that night, and then I _crooned_ over that ‘Savourneen delish’ you are so fond of; and that brought poor Tom and his motherless children before me! Aunt, dear—maybe I didn’t use Tom well! I couldn’t help it: though you often told me I should not cast out dirty water until I could get clean—not a grate compliment to Tom either!—yet to be obliged, after a few words, to be a mother all out to three sharp children; and if _he_ was cold and weary, and didn’t smile and talk every day the same, to have the creeping chill steal over me like the shake,[25] that he was thinking of his first wife, and maybe comparing us in his own mind—that would drive me as wild as the other thing I tould you of a while ago; and yet, I own to you, I have thought more of poor Tom since I left home, than ever I did while I was there.