“What _is_ the matter?” cried Mrs. Carter, dropping her knife and fork, “poor little darling! who has been ’busing it?” Mr. Smith was rather disturbed by the cloud on his wife’s face, and held out his arms in an abject, deprecating way; but the indignant woman turned her back upon him, and took her own chair, with majestic wrath. “No, Mr. Smith, I’m not that helpless that I can’t take care of my own child.” “But the tea. I thought you might——” Here Mrs. Smith broke off the speech over which her husband faltered. “No I mightn’t; it won’t be the first time I’ve poured out tea with a baby in my arms!” “And a nice picter she makes,” said Mrs. Carter, “my brother never sees a woman holding a baby like that but he calls her a madonner at once. I only wish he could see _her_.” “I wish he could—only when she’s a trifle more like herself,” muttered Smith. Mrs. Smith did not hear this cautious aside, but holding Jerusha Maria on her left arm, poured out the tea with her right hand, holding the Brittannia pot high up, and doing the honors with a dash. Smith took this as defiance, and withered under it. “Dear me, what is that?” exclaimed Mrs. Carter, listening to a sound of suppressed sobs that came from the next room. “Somebody crying, I do believe.” Mrs. Smith suspended the amber stream that was dashing into one of her best china cups, and listened. Sure enough, suppressed sobs broke from the other room, that smote her to the heart. She sat down the tea-pot, gathered up Jerusha Maria, and went into the kitchen. There she found James Laurence sitting on a chair, with both arms flung out on the table, trying his very best to smother the sound of his own uncontrollable mortification and grief. “Why! James, my boy; what are you crying about?” The lad lifted up his head, and hurriedly wiped the tears from his eyes. “I—I wasn’t crying much!” he answered, choking back his tears bravely. “Only—only I try so hard to do everything!” “I know you do. There never was a better boy. Jerusha Maria, the little darling, _is_ aggravating sometimes. What did she want then?” “Only to put her two hands into the fire.” “You little tyke!” exclaimed the mother, giving a slight shake and then an appeasing kiss to the child in her arms, “and I was cross as fury because he wouldn’t let her do it. There, there, James; never mind what I said. Of course I didn’t mean it. You haven’t a better friend in the world than I am.” “I know that, how can I forget it? nothing else could have brought me down to crying like a baby. The first cross word brought all your goodness to me, and our people right before me, and I felt like—like a wretch.”