"The eldest child certainly has that disadvantage," said Mrs. Grey; "and it has also the added disadvantage of entering the world with characteristics that children born later may possess but in a mellowed form. On the other hand, the first-born gets most from its parents as its birthright. Belle, here, has had a mother thirty years; but Fred has had one only twenty-two." "How funny!" said Laura. "Oh, dear! nothing looks funny to me," said Hatty, with a sigh. "Kitzie is so headstrong, and I am such a young little mother, and know so little how to manage her! And Fred can't endure spoiled children." "Why, Hatty, you are not spoiling Kitty," Mrs. Grey said, with some surprise. "Are you sure? Oh, but you don't see me at my worst! I'm on my good behavior when I'm here, trying to make you all love me. But devoted as I am to Kitty, living among you all here has made me see my own faults as I never did before. She often provokes me so that I want to do something awful--something one of my teachers did to me when I was specially naughty." "What was that, pray?" asked Laura. "Look daggers at her!" Hatty reluctantly replied. "If you take lessons from my mother, you'll look milk and honey, not daggers," said Laura. "Dear me! do you know how late it is? Consider yourselves kissed, all around, for I'm off to bed." And singing like a bird, Laura hopped away to her room, hung lightly, for an instant, over her sleeping child, and was soon asleep, not much more than a child herself. CHAPTER VII. This was the last family council, for the time--as Fred grew "wife and child sick," as he expressed it, and came and bore them away in triumph; and the Heaths, and Laura and her babies, soon followed. Little Mabel alone remained, without a fear on Belle's part that grandmamma would over-feed, or spoil, or neglect her darling--who, for her part, was content to stay with Margaret, between whom and herself there had sprung up a beautiful friendship. Before Fred bore away his household gods, he sought a private interview with his mother, eager to know what she thought of them; for immediately on his marriage he had taken his wife abroad, and this was the first time she and his child had come under her roof. "I think you a lucky fellow, young man," she said, good-humoredly. "Hatty is coming into full sympathy with us, and has in her the makings of a very fine woman, as Mrs. Goodwin once said of her Sophie. I suppose you do not expect anything more from me than this?" "Now, mother, this isn't fair," he remonstrated. "I never pretended that she was equal to you, or to the girls; but she has a great deal of character, and yet is very impressible. I can wind her round my finger like a piece of silk." "She's much more likely to wind you round hers. She has a will of iron. But I do not object to that."