But, though between the age of two years and of ten there is no important change, nor even preparation for a change in the constitution, the time is yet one of most active growth of the body, and consolidation of the skeleton. The stature increases from 2 ft. 6 in. to 4 ft. 6 in., and the weight nearly doubles, while at the same time the ends of the long bones previously connected with the shafts by means of cartilage or gristle, become firmly united by the conversion of that cartilage into bone, and a similar process goes on, though not completed till later, in the ribs and the breast bone. Rapid increase of height and weight; conversion of the elements of bone into bone itself, formation of muscle out of the fat, which in the young child was stored up as so much building material for an edifice in course of construction, require for their accomplishment perfect health, and the power of converting to its highest purposes all the nourishment received. What wonder then, if from time to time, the machinery thus hardly taxed, fails to be quite equal to the demands upon it, if pains in the limbs--growing pains, as they are commonly called, or head-ache, tell of the inadequate nerve supply. Or if from the same cause, a vague feverish condition comes on, in which the temperature is slightly raised, and the child listless, and yet fretful, loses its cheerfulness, is dull at its easy tasks, and yet indifferent to play. This too is the time when any unsuspected defects, physical, or mental, or moral, begin to show themselves distinctly; when short sight becomes apparent so soon as the child has to learn its letters, when the dull hearing is perceived which makes it seem inattentive, and gives to its manner an unchildlike nervousness; and the weak intellect is displayed in causeless laughter, causeless mischief, causeless passion, imperfect power of articulation, or want of words, and by a restless busyness in doing nothing. Of all these things I shall have to speak later on more fully. They are the things however, which only those mothers notice who live much with their children, who do not banish them all day long to the nursery or the school-room, and learn from another whether they fare well or ill. They and only they will notice these things in whom there dwells that which the poet tells us of: The mother's love that grows From the soft child, to the strong man; now soft, Now strong as either, and still one sole same love. FOOTNOTES: [10] The exact numbers as given at p. xiv of the forty-fifth Report of the Registrar-General for all England in 1881 are to 1,000 living under one year 58 deaths; from one to five 6.1; from five to ten 3.3. CHAPTER VI. THE DISORDERS AND DISEASES OF THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM.