"'Jane,' said her mother, gravely, 'if you are not mending that glove, give it to me. It is getting late.' "Jane brushed her hand across her eyes, and stitched away again. Then she threw the gloves to Hugh without looking at him, and ran to get ready to go to the coach." So little allowance was ordinarily made in that house for signs of affection, or manifestations of personal attachment, that the child who was going away for six months was "amazed to find that his sisters were giving up an hour of their lessons that they might go with him to the coach." Even when Hugh got his foot so crushed it had to be amputated, though his mother came to him and gave him every proper attention, yet "Hugh saw no tears from her"; nothing more than that "her face was very pale and grave." His anticipations of her coming had not been warm; his one anxiety had been that he might bear his pain resolutely before her. "As Hugh cried, he said he bore it so very badly he did not know what his mother would say if she saw him." And it was well that he had not anticipated any outburst of pity or expression of sympathy from her, for, when she did come, "she kissed him with a long, long kiss; but she did not speak." Her first words in the hearing of her agonized child were spoken to give him an intimation that the surgeons were waiting to take off his foot. The boy's reply was--not to cling to her for support, and to nestle in her bosom for comfort in the most terrible moment of his young life, but--"Do not stay now; this pain is so bad! I can't bear it well at all. Do go, now, and bid them make haste, will you?" Later, when the leg was better, the poor boy's mental misery once overpowered him, even in his mother's presence. Sitting with her and his sister--"... He said, 'He did not know how he should bear his misfortune. When he thought of the long, long days, and months, and years, to the end of his life, and that he should never run and play, and never be like other people, and never able to do the commonest things without labor and trouble, he wished he was dead. He would rather have died!' Agnes thought he must be miserable indeed if he would venture to say this to his mother." Such was the idea that these children had of maternal sympathy and love! So little did they look upon their mother as the one person above all others to whom their secret troubles should be opened!