Poor Jenny! It seems to me I see her now, in the position of Mr Lee’s house-mistress and friend, a gentle creature, with a timid, patient manner, with quiet movements, and soft hair streaked with grey. Her memory had never entirely recovered from the physical strain of one dreadful New Year’s Eve; for her health had been broken before by many troubles, and it was not possible for her to regain her former strength. But she understood that her children were honoured and were happy, under the friendship and patronage of the Squire and Mr Lee, and that years only brought an added tenderness to the behaviour of her boy and girl to her. If she was glad it was with a quiet happiness--she knew not how she had deserved it, or, how it had come to her--only that her bark had floated at last into peaceful waters, after many years of clouded, troubled life. Perhaps Nat understood--Nat, happy, useful, honoured, with an ever-widening education, and with ever higher hopes; or perhaps Annie knew--beautiful, admired, and prosperous, in spite of the shadow of sorrow that rested always on her face; her children had more education than herself, and could understand better how things should come to be, could look back on the timid love that had trained and tended them, and in their worst moments had risen, and proved itself strong to save. Such love, unobtrusive, unpraised, unknown to fame, may be found in our homes through the whole length of our land; unrewarded sometimes--but the ‘Infinite Pity is sufficient’ for even the ‘infinite pathos’ of a mother’s life. I was standing the other day by the side of a low tombstone, grey, green with age, lying horizontally in the grass, with winter bareness round it, itself chipped and defaced, without any inscription visible, and only a faint mark of a cross. And I remembered how in the summer months I had been attracted to it by a sight that made another kind of suggestiveness--the little blue speedwells which, springing close to it, converted it into harmony with their loveliness. So tender, so gracious, with such power to consecrate, are such influences as the mother’s love, which lay their soft colours against the hard stones of our lives, and transform that which might else seem sad and broken into beauty. THE END Transcriber’s Note This transcription is based on scans made available by the British Library: https://historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/bl-000841726 The following changes were made to the printed text: • p. 15: a young work an was leaning outside the railings of the chapel--Changed “work an” to “workman”. • p. 69: thee think’st a deal o’ thysel;’--Moved the apostrophe after the semicolon to before the semicolon. • p. 93: he drew down his eyebrows into a more decided frown.’--Deleted the closing single quotation mark. • p. 101: there was at last a sound of foot-steps--Changed “foot-steps” to “footsteps”. • p. 106: have you seen t’ Thackbusk when its late at night--Changed “its” to “it’s”.