A grammar was not among Mrs. Carpenter's few possessions, nor found on the shelves of the book-stall above-mentioned. Here too she sought to make memory supply the place of printed words. Rollin served as a text- book again. Rotha learned the parts of speech, and their distinctions and inflexions; also, as far as her mother could recollect them, the rules of syntax. Against all this branch of study she revolted, as unintelligible. Writing compositions went better; but for the mechanical part of this exercise Mrs. Carpenter had no leisure. She did set Rotha a copy now and then; but writing and arithmetic for the most part got the go-by. What Mrs. Carpenter did she must do with her fingers plying the needle and her eyes on her work. It helped them both, all this learning and teaching; reading and talking. It saved their life from being a dead monotony, and their minds from vegetating; and diverted them from sorrowful regrets and recollections. Life was quite active and stirring in the little rooms where they lived. Nevertheless, their physical nature did not thrive so well as the mental. Rotha was growing fast, and shooting up slender and pale, living too housed a life; and her mother began to lose freshness and to grow thin with too constant application. As the winter passed away, and warm weather opened the buds of the trees which in some places graced the city, these human plants seemed to wither more and more. "O mother," said Rotha, standing at the window one day in the late spring, "I think the city is just horrid!" "Never mind, my child. We have a comfortable home, and a great deal to be thankful for." "If I could only see the butterflies in the fields again!" sighed Rotha. Her mother echoed the sigh, but this time said nothing. "And I would like a good big tumbler of real milk, and some strawberries, and some of your bread and butter, mother." "Yes, my child." "Mother, how comes it that aunt Serena is rich, and you and I are so poor?" "You have asked me that before." "But you didn't tell me." "I told you, it was in consequence of the different marriages we made." "Yes, I know. But you were not poor before you married father, were you?" "No." "Then that is what I mean. What is become of it? Where is your part?" "Nowhere, dear." "What became of it then, mother?" "I never had it, Rotha. You had better get your book and read. That would be wiser than asking useless questions." "But why didn't you have it, mother? Did aunt Serena--did your sister-- get it all?" "Get your book, Rotha." "Mother, please tell me. I shall know the answer if you do not tell me." "Your aunt had it all," Mrs. Carpenter said very quietly. "Why?" "Your grandfather thought there were good reasons." "_Were_ there, mother?"