Precious indeed it is, not only as representing untold sacrifice on his part, but as showing that he really cares for me,--he is so reserved and self-contained I did not dream he did. One thing is certain,--I will try to deserve his sacrifice and love,--to-morrow I will send away not only for bright ribbons, but for cheerful dresses which shall please his eyes and those of the others. No longer shall they see me in garments of heaviness. _Tuesday._ This noon, Iry, who since our first talk about swearing, has been trying without much success to stop it--sometimes he bites off the tail of a swear-word, but generally the head and trunk escape him--ran into my room with big eyes. "Geordie and me was a-quarling over a shinny-bat he traded me out of, and I started to say a' awful cuss-word at him, and then I ricollected what you said about my maw a-watching me all the time, and I never said a thing to him but 'Dad burn your ole soul!'" I congratulated the "pure scholar" on his great victory, and encouraged him to press on. _Wednesday, Bed-time._ To-day was Mother's birthday. While I was placing a bowl of asters before her picture over my fireboard, Nucky came in, and I spoke to him about her, telling him how her love and courage had sustained me through deepest sorrow, and how terribly I miss her now. After a while he said, in a low voice, "I miss my maw, too." "Tell me about her," I said. Then, little by little, and often with great difficulty, and with long silences, he told me the story of his mother; how devoted she had been to her children, and how eager that they, and especially he, should get learning, teaching him what she could, getting a little district school established on Trigger three years ago, and coming over herself to this school last April to try and get him in here, being nag-flung on her way home, and sustaining injuries which caused her to die a month later when her last baby was born; how on her deathbed she had called her family around her, and given them her love and blessing and advice, asking her husband never to put a "step-maw" over her children, and leaving them all in Blant's charge, confiding to his special care the day-old baby, "your paw being too puny to set up with it of nights," and passing away at last clinging to them and weeping bitter tears that she must leave them. He also told how Blant had accepted his sacred trust; tenderly and tirelessly minding the younger children, cooking and cleaning; when not out tending the crop, clearing new-ground, logging and the like, and how, above all, he has devoted himself to "the babe," patiently walking the floor with it at night, warming its bottle, jolting it on his knee, toasting its little feet before the fire, sleeping with it on his arm, and "making it sugar-teats and soot-tea as good as a woman." This being the same Blant who "never goes out without a gun," and has done such notable slaughter in the hereditary "war" with the Cheevers!