I could have trodden on them. And I could think of nothing else,
except our being poor, and the number of mouths there were at
home."

"Well, well, my dear," said Mr. Tetterby, shaking her hand
encouragingly, "that's truth, after all. We ARE poor, and there
ARE a number of mouths at home here."

"Ah! but, Dolf, Dolf!" cried his wife, laying her hands upon his
neck, "my good, kind, patient fellow, when I had been at home a
very little while--how different! Oh, Dolf, dear, how different it
was! I felt as if there was a rush of recollection on me, all at
once, that softened my hard heart, and filled it up till it was
bursting. All our struggles for a livelihood, all our cares and
wants since we have been married, all the times of sickness, all
the hours of watching, we have ever had, by one another, or by the
children, seemed to speak to me, and say that they had made us one,
and that I never might have been, or could have been, or would have
been, any other than the wife and mother I am. Then, the cheap
enjoyments that I could have trodden on so cruelly, got to be so
precious to me--Oh so priceless, and dear!--that I couldn't bear to
think how much I had wronged them; and I said, and say again a
hundred times, how could I ever behave so, 'Dolphus, how could I
ever have the heart to do it!"

The good woman, quite carried away by her honest tenderness and
remorse, was weeping with all her heart, when she started up with a
scream, and ran behind her husband. Her cry was so terrified, that
the children started from their sleep and from their beds, and
clung about her. Nor did her gaze belie her voice, as she pointed