Your affectionate nurse, ABIJAH WOLF." Although Ned was a lad of sixteen, he had a great cry over this letter, but it did him good, and it was with a softer heart that he prepared to receive his mother and her husband that evening.

The meeting passed off better than he had anticipated.

Mrs.Mulready was really affected at seeing her children again, and embraced them, Ned thought, with more fondness than she had done when they went away.

Mr.Mulready spoke genially and kindly, and Ned began to hope that things would not be so bad after all.
The next morning, to his surprise, his mother appeared at breakfast, a thing which he could not remember that she had ever done before, and yet the hour was an early one, as her husband wanted to be off to the mill.
During the meal Mr.Mulready spoke sharply two or three times, and it seemed to Ned that his mother was nervously anxious to please him.
"Things are not going on so well after all," he said to himself as he walked with his brother to school.

"Mother has changed already; I can see that she isn't a bit like herself.