I suppose," continued Laura, impelled to say this to some one who was sure to be impressed by it--"I suppose nobody ever did mourn as my grandmother did over the loss of those two sons.

Yet she never used to blame them." They did run away then, and they did keep away, and yet she did not blame them.

How deeply pathetic these things seemed.

Whatever it might be that had made his step-father write that letter, it appeared now to be thrown back to the time when he had divided himself thus from his family and taken his boy brother with him.
"And that other portrait," said Laura, "we found up in one of the garrets, and hung here when the house was restored.

It is the portrait of my grandmother's only brother, who was sixteen or eighteen years younger than she was.