"Well," she said, as he came near, "did you get up for all day? I'd be ashamed--great boy like you--to lie in bed till this time of day, and let your mother split wood and bring water to cook your breakfast with." "You cooked, a little for you, too, didn't you?" asked Tip, in a saucy, good-natured tone. "Where's father?" "Just where you have been all day so far,--in bed and asleep. Such folks as I've got! I'm sick of living." And Mrs. Lewis stepped back from the steaming tea-kettle, and wiped great beads of perspiration from her forehead; then fanned herself with her big apron, looking meantime very tired and cross. Yet Tip's mother was not so cross after all as she seemed; had Tip only known it, her heart was very heavy that morning. She did not blame his father for his morning nap, not a bit of it; she was only glad that the weary frame could rest a little after a night of pain. She had been up since the first grey dawn of morning, bathing his head, straightening the tangled bedclothes, walking the floor with the restless baby, in order that her husband might have quiet. Oh no; there were worse women in the world than Mrs. Lewis; but this morning her life looked very wretched to her. She thought of her idle, mischievous boy; of her naughty, high-tempered little girl; of her fat, healthy baby, who took so much of her time; of her husband, who, though she never said it to him, or even to herself, yet she knew and felt was every day growing weaker; and with these came the remembrance that her own tired hands were all that lay between them and want; and it is hardly a wonder that her voice was sharp and her words ill chosen. For this mother tried to bear all her trials alone; she never went for help to the Redeemer, who said,-- "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden." "Wah!" said Johnny, from his cradle in the bit of a bedroom near the kitchen,--which kitchen was all the room they had, save two tiny bedrooms and Tip's little den up-stairs. Mrs. Lewis glanced quickly towards the door of her husband's room; it was closed. Then she called,-- "Kitty, make that baby go to sleep!" "Oh yes!" muttered Kitty, who sat on the floor lacing her old shoe with a white cord; "it's easy to say that, but I'd just like to see you do it." "Ah yah!" answered Johnny from the cradle, as though he tried to say, "So should I." Then, not being noticed, he gave up pretending to cry, and screamed in good earnest, loud, positive yells, which brought his mother in haste from the kitchen. "Ugly girl!" she said to Kitty, as she lifted the conquering hero from his cradle; "you don't care how soon your father is waked out of the only nap he has had all night. Why didn't you rock the cradle? I've a notion to whip you this minute!" "I did," answered Kitty sulkily; "and he opened his eyes at me as wide as he could stretch them."