I do notice the gentry that eat the fat of the land are none the
better for it; for a poor woman can do a mother's part by her child,
but high-born and high-fed folk can't always; so you had to be brought
up by hand, miss, and it did not agree with you, and that is no great
wonder, seeing it is against nature. Well, my little girl, that was
born just two days after you, died in my arms of convulsion fits when
she was just a month old. She had only just been buried, and me in
bitter grief, when doesn't the doctor call and ask me as a great
favor, would I nurse Mrs. Fountain's child, that was pining for want
of its natural food. I bade him get out of my sight. I felt as if no
woman had a right to have a child living when my little darling was
gone. But my husband, a just man as ever was, said, 'Take a thought,
Mary; the child is really pining, by all accounts.' Well, I would not
listen to him. But next Sunday, after afternoon church, my mother,
that had not said a word till then, comes to me, and puts her hand on
my shoulder with a quiet way she had. 'Mary,' says she, 'I am older
than you, and have known more.' She had buried six of us, poor thing.
Says she, scarce above a whisper, 'Suckle that failing child. It will
be the better for her, and the better for you, Mary, my girl.' Well,
miss, my mother was a woman that didn't interfere every minute, and
seldom gave her reasons; but, if you scorned her advice, you mostly
found them out to your cost; and then she was my mother; and in those
days mothers were more thought of, leastways by us that were women and
had suffered for our children, and so learned to prize the woman that
had suffered for us.
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