From Seven to Seventy

"To scrub a kitchen floor better than anyone else," she replied; and he succumbed, his New England nature realizing that, after all, it might be well to have one practical person in the family. Mother's thrifty streak came in very useful, for a young widow with four lusty children to feed did not have an easy time in those days. The sun never rose upon her asleep and her small economies were ever her own pride and the butt of our selfish derision. After her day's work was over, it was my delight-little brute that I was-to lie in bed and listen to her voice, reading to me from some story of delicious adventure. When her head drooped and the book fell from her hands, I, still wide awake, would whine and finally yell, until she pulled herself together and went on. Mother's day was an endless round of doing something for others.