"
"What you earn is sweetest," quoth Mrs. Mugridge, when I suggested that
it was about time they took a rest.
"No, an' we don't want help," said Thomas Mugridge, in reply to my
question as to whether the children lent them a hand.
"We'll work till we dry up and blow away, mother an' me," he added; and
Mrs. Mugridge nodded her head in vigorous indorsement.
Fifteen children she had borne, and all were away and gone, or dead. The
"baby," however, lived in Maidstone, and she was twenty-seven. When the
children married they had their hands full with their own families and
troubles, like their fathers and mothers before them.
Where were the children? Ah, where were they not? Lizzie was in
Australia; Mary was in Buenos Ayres; Poll was in New York; Joe had died
in India--and so they called them up, the living and the dead, soldier
and sailor, and colonist's wife, for the traveller's sake who sat in
their kitchen.
They passed me a photograph. A trim young fellow, in soldier's garb
looked out at me.
"And which son is this?" I asked.
They laughed a hearty chorus. Son! Nay, grandson, just back from Indian
service and a soldier-trumpeter to the King. His brother was in the same
regiment with him.
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