Compton Poynsett in her own right; and had been so early married and
widowed, as to have been the most efficient parental influence her
five sons had ever known; and their beautiful young mother had been
the object of their adoration from the nursery upwards, so that she
laughed at people who talked of the trouble and anxiety of rearing
sons.

They had all taken their cue from their senior, who had always been
more to his mother than all the world besides. For several years,
he being as old of his age as she was young, Mr. and Mrs. Charnock
Poynsett, with scarcely eighteen years between their ages, had often
been taken by strangers for husband and wife rather than son and
mother. And though she knew she ought to wish for his marriage, she
could not but be secretly relieved that there were no symptoms of
any such went impending.

At last, during the first spring after Raymond Charnock Poynsett,
Esquire, had been elected member for the little borough of
Willansborough, his mother, while riding with her two youngest boys,
met with an accident so severe, that in two years she had never
quitted the morning-room, whither she had at first been carried.
She was daily lifted to a couch, but she could endure no further
motion, though her general health had become good, and her
cheerfulness made her room pleasant to her sons when the rest of the
house was very dreary to them.

Raymond, always the home son, would never have absented himself but
for his parliamentary duties, and vibrated between London and home,
until, when his mother had settled into a condition that seemed
likely to be permanent, and his two youngest brothers were at home,