A widowed sister came with her children to make her home under the same roof when the Grays moved later to a larger farm, and there seemed always some boy to be housed and taught and trained. Though his aid might tell out of doors, the home care came upon the mother. But Mrs. Gray was a woman of singularly quiet and gentle character, with great strength and decision, and possessed a wonderful power of accomplishing and turning off work; a woman of thoughtful, earnest ways, conscientious and self-forgetting. The father was quick, decided, and an immense worker; from him the son took his lively movements and his quick eagerness of character, perhaps also his ready appreciation of fun. [9] His mother, having another child, was probably glad to have the active boy safe for a few hours. Her young sisters lived not far away, and the youngest aunt, a girl of ten, was proud to take him to school; she had already taught him his letters. His father promised him a spelling-book of his own as soon as he reached _baker_, which was a marked spot of advance in the spelling-book. A few weeks saw him far enough on, and the coveted prize was given. He went proudly to school the next day, and as he could not speak to the teacher to proclaim his triumph, he walked in front of her desk to his seat, waving the book with a great flourish before her! It was just before he was three years old. [10] Of one of these, his friend, now over eighty years old, gives an account in the succeeding letter:-- SAUQUOIT, _February 19, 1888_.