Anything wrong about the children brings on the grief so much, that I cannot bear to mention it." Richard and Flora agreed with her, admiring the spirit which made her, in her weakness and helplessness, bear the whole burden of family cares alone, and devote herself entirely to spare her father.

He was, indeed, her first object, and she would have sacrificed anything to give him ease of mind; but, perhaps, she regarded him more as a charge of her own, than as, in very truth, the head of the family.

She had the government in her hands, and had never been used to see him exercise it much in detail (she did not know how much her mother had referred to him in private), and had succeeded to her authority at a time when his health and spirits were in such a state as to make it doubly needful to spare him.

It was no wonder that she sometimes carried her consideration beyond what was strictly right, and forgot that he was the real authority, more especially as his impulsive nature sometimes carried him away, and his sound judgment was not certain to come into play at the first moment, so that it required some moral courage to excite displeasure, so easy of manifestation; and of such courage there was, perhaps, a deficiency in her character.

Nor had she yet detected her own satisfaction in being the first with every one in the family.
Ethel was put out, as Flora had discovered, and when she was downstairs she found it out, and accused herself of having been cross to Margaret, and unkind to Tom--of wishing to be a tell-tale.