healthy child, and Una remarkably well for her, and money is so slow
to come in and so fast to go out. What discomforts we suffer in the
country it would take a book to write down, and here we shall have
our own home, as usual. I shall not have to be separated from Ernest,
and shall have leisure to devote to two very interesting people who
must stay in town all the year round, no matter who goes out of it. I
mean dear Mrs. Campbell and Miss Clifford, who both attract me,
though in such different ways.



Chapter 22

XXII.

OCTOBER.

WELL, I had my own way, and I am afraid it has been an unwise one,
for though I have enjoyed the leisure afforded by everybody being out
of town, and the opportunity it has given me to devote myself to the
very sweetest work on earth, the care of my darling little ones, the
heat and the stifling atmosphere have been trying for me and for
them. My pretty Rose went last May, to bloom in a home of her own, so
I thought I would not look for a nurse, but take the whole care of
them myself. This would not be much of a task to a strong person, but
I am not strong, and a great deal of the time just dressing them and
taking them out to walk has exhausted me. Then all the mending and
other sewing must be done, and with the over-exertion creeps in the
fretful tone, the impatient word. Yet I never can be as impatient
with little children as I should be but for the remembrance that I