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As they stood round the piano, Titia and Atty one at each side, and Oliver creeping in to lean upon his step-mothers knee, there was a sweet grave look on all their faces, which made even the two eldest not unpretty children; for their hearts were in their faces their once frightened, frozen, or bad and bitter hearts. They had no need to hide any thing, or be afraid of any thing. They were loved.
Strangely enough, there were present three women whose mothers had died while the children were still infants, and whose fathers had married again, and two women who were themselves step-mothers. Each of the three who could not remember her own mother agreed that she who took her place had filled it so conscientiously that the child hardly felt the lack.
Robert Barnet was the son of her next-door neighbor, about two years older than herself; they had grown up together as school companions and playmates; and often in my drives I used to meet them coming home hand in hand from school, or from the woods with berries and nuts, talking and laughing as if there were no scolding step-mothers in the world.
Rolleston agreed and interpreted it her own way. Bluebell drew a long rocking-chair by her side, and they fell into a pleasant little talk. Mrs. Rolleston always made a pet of this child; she was the best of step-mothers, but stood a little in awe of Cecil.
"Bertie," she thought, "your evil influence is over us all. Mamma, till now the truest of step-mothers, is only thinking of ensuring you my fortune. I disoblige papa, send away a true love, hate Bluebell for her too attractive soft eyes, am harassed by doubts even of you is it worth it? I might yet recall Lucian Fane; he is very calm, and would not expect too much. What folly!
Girls don't have so many step-mothers nowadays." "And our house was one story a long house, with the eaves most touching the ground and big chimneys at both ends. It was full of folks." "I should think so," interposed Marjorie. "And Sunday nights we used to sing 'God of my childhood and my youth. Can you sing that? I wish you'd sing it to me. I forget what comes next."
They have two mothers, both step-mothers, ignorance and misery. They have a guide, necessity; and for all forms of satisfaction, appetite. They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, not after the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger. From suffering these spectres pass to crime; fatal affiliation, dizzy creation, logic of darkness.
Everything went on apparently smoothly in the family for some time under the new regime; there were no winds or waves of discord to ruffle the surface of every-day life, and the father was content. But it is a woman's danger to be petty and mean, and step-mothers are proverbial all the world over, and this one's heart was not as her first smiles were.
"He might jest's well's not," reasoned Jim to himself, "give us a little lift: I guess he would if Sairy's own mother was alive; but them step-mothers never wants to give nothin' ter the fust wives' childern." In which opinion Jim did the second Mrs.
"I wouldn't want to have so many step-mothers as you had, and I'd rather be named Marjorie than Experience." "Experience is a good name, and I'd have earned it by this time if my mother hadn't given it to me," and the sunken lips puckered themselves into a smile. "I could tell you some dreadful things, too, but Hepsie won't like it if I do. I'll tell you one, though.
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