free from affections, and quite enough for herself. She never suspected that others could suffer from a weakness of which she knew nothing, because it had never touched her.
If anyone had told her that these two children, who ate their plentiful, rough meals at her table, among field hands and servants, were neglected and lonely, and that their own knowledge of it burned in their childish minds, she would have thought the announcement a piece of idle, sentimental folly; but that there was no solid detail of her farming a fact more real than this one, was the grievous truth.
"When we were at home," was Meg's summing up of the situation, "at least we belonged to somebody. We were poor and wore our clothes a long time, and had shabby shoes and couldn't go on excursions; but we had our own little bench by the fire, and father and mother used to talk to us and let us read their books and papers, and try to teach us things. I don't know what we were going to be when we grew up, but we were going to do some sort of work, and know as much as father and mother did. I don't know whether that was a great deal or not—but it was something."
"It was enough to teach school," said Robin. "If we were not so far out in the country now I believe
