They got also some pieces of matting, and contrived to put
up a screen betwixt it and the rickety door. By the exercise of their
art they had gained enough to keep them in food, but never enough to pay
for the poorest lodging. They counted themselves, however, better off by
much than if they had been crowded with all sorts in such lodging as a
little more might have enabled them to procure.
The parents loved Moxy more tenderly than either of his brothers, and it
was with sore hearts they saw him getting worse. The sickness was a mild
smallpox--so mild that they did not recognize it, yet more than Moxy
could bear, and he was gradually sinking. When this became clear to the
mother, then indeed she felt the hand of God heavy upon her.
Religiously brought up, she had through the ordinary troubles of a
married life sought help from the God in whom her mother had
believed:--we do not worship our fathers and mothers like the
Chinese--though I do not envy the man who can scorn them for it--but
they are, if at all decent parents, our first mediators with the great
father, whom we can worse spare than any baby his mother;--but with
every fresh attack of misery, every step further down on the stair of
life, she thought she had lost her last remnant of hope, and knew that
up to that time she had hoped, while past seasons of failure looked like
times of blessed prosperity.
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