I was a wild slip of a girl, ten years of age, and my brother Richard about two years older, when my father brought home his second wife. She was the daughter of a farmer up at Lackabawn, and was reared with care and dacency; but her father held his ground at a rack-rent, and the middleman that was between him and the head landlord did not pay his own rent, so the place was ejected, and the farmer collected every penny he had, and set off with his family to America. My father had a liking for the youngest daughter, and well become him to have it, for a sweeter creature never drew the breath of life; but while her father passed for a _strong_[2] farmer, he was timorous-like about asking her to share his little cabin; however, when he found how matters stood, he didn’t lose much time in finding out that she was willing to be his wife, and a mother to his boy and girl. _That_ she was, a patient loving one. Oh! it often sticks me like a knife, when I think how many times I fretted her with my foolishness and my idle ways, and how ’twas a long time before I’d call her “mother.” Often, when my father would be going to chastise Richard and myself for our provoking doings, especially the day that we took half-a-dozen eggs from under the hatching hen, to play “Blind Tom” with them, she’d interfere for us, and say,—“Tim, _aleagh_, don’t touch them this time; sure ’tis only _arch_ they are: they’ll get more sense in time.” And then, after he was gone out, she’d advise us for our good so pleasantly, that a thundercloud itself couldn’t look black at her. She did wonders too about the house and garden. They were both dirty and neglected enough when she first came over them; for I was too young and foolish, and my father too busy with his out-door work, and the old woman that lived with us in service too feeble and too blind to keep the place either clean or decent; but my mother got the floor raised, and the green pool in front drained, and a parcel of roses and honeysuckles planted there instead. The neighbours’ wives used to say ’Twas all pride and upsetting folly, to keep the kitchen-floor swept clean, and to put the potatoes on a dish, instead of emptying them out of the pot into the middle of the table; and, besides, ’twas a cruel unnatural thing, they said, to take away the pool from the ducks, that they were always used to paddle in so handy. But my mother was always too busy and too happy to heed what they said; and, besides, she was always so ready to do a kind turn for any of them, that, out of pure shame, they had at last to leave off abusing her “fine English ways.” Footnote 2: Rich.