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“Will you take the rocking-chair, ma’am?” inquired Mrs. Watkinson.

Mrs. Morland declining the offer, the hostess took it herself, and see-sawed on it nearly the whole time. It was a very awkward, high-legged, crouch-backed rocking-chair, and shamefully unprovided with anything in the form of a footstool.

“My husband is away, at Boston, on business,” said Mrs. Watkinson. “I thought at first, ma’am, I should not be able to ask you here this evening, for it is not our way to have company in his absence; but my daughter Jane over-persuaded me to send for you.”

“What a pity,” thought Caroline.

“You must take us as you find us, ma’am,” continued Mrs. Watkinson. “We use no ceremony with anybody; and our rule is never to put ourselves out of the way. We do not give parties [looking at the dresses of the ladies]. Our first duty is to our children, and we cannot waste our substance on fashion and folly. They’ll have cause to thank us for it when we die.”

Something like a sob was heard from the centre table, at which the children were sitting, and a boy was seen to hold his handkerchief to his face.

“Joseph, my child,” said his mother, “do not cry. You have no idea, ma’am, what an extraordinary boy that is. You see how the bare mention of such a thing as our deaths has overcome him.”

There was another sob behind the handkerchief, and the Morlands thought it now sounded very much like a smothered laugh.

“As I was saying, ma’am,” continued Mrs. Watkinson, “we never give parties. We leave all sinful things to the vain and foolish. My daughter Jane has been telling me, that she heard this morning of a party that is going on tonight at the widow St. Leonard’s. It is only fifteen years since her husband died. He was carried off with a three days’ illness, but two months after they were married. I have had a domestic that lived with them at the time, so I know all about it. And there she is now, living in an elegant house, and riding in her carriage, and dressing and dashing, and giving parties, and enjoying life, as she calls it. Poor creature, how I pity her! Thank heaven, nobody that I know goes to her parties. If they did I would never wish to see them again in my house. It is an encouragement to folly and nonsense—and folly and nonsense are sinful. Do not you think so, ma’am?”

“If carried too far they may certainly become so,” replied Mrs.
Morland.

“We have heard,” said Edward, “that Mrs. St. Leonard, though one of the ornaments of the gay world, has a kind heart, a beneficent spirit and a liberal hand.”

“I know very little about her,” replied Mrs. Watkinson, drawing up her head, “and I have not the least desire to know any more. It is well she has no children; they’d be lost sheep if brought up in her fold. For my part, ma’am,” she continued, turning to Mrs. Morland, “I am quite satisfied with the quiet joys of a happy home. And no mother has the least business with any other pleasures. My innocent babes know nothing about plays, and balls, and parties; and they never shall. Do they look as if they had been accustomed to a life of pleasure?”

They certainly did not! for when the Morlands took a glance at them, they thought they had never seen youthful faces that were less gay, and indeed less prepossessing.

There was not a good feature or a pleasant expression among them all. Edward Morland recollected his having often read “that childhood is always lovely.” But he saw that the juvenile Watkinsons were an exception to the rule.

“The first duty of a mother is to her children,” repeated Mrs. Watkinson. “Till nine o’clock, my daughter Jane and myself are occupied every evening in hearing the lessons that they have learned for to-morrow’s school. Before that hour we can receive no visitors, and we never have company to tea, as that would interfere too much with our duties. We had just finished hearing these lessons when you arrived. Afterwards the children are permitted to indulge themselves in rational play, for I permit no amusement that is not also instructive. My children are so well trained, that even when alone their sports are always serious.”