Dabbs, Kate sullenly yielded
the point.
Daniel was aware of all this, and it made an impression upon him.
To-night Emma was as usual left alone with the children. After tea,
when Kate left the house, she sat down to the machine and worked for
a couple of hours; for her there was small difference between Sunday
and week day. Whilst working she told the children stories; it was a
way of beguiling them from their desire to go and play in the
street. They were strange stories, half recollected from a childhood
which, had promised better things than a maidenhood of garret
misery, half Emma's own invention. They had a grace, a spontaneity,
occasionally an imaginative brightness, which would have made them,
if they had been taken down from the lips, models of tale-telling
for children. Emma had two classes of story: the one concerned
itself with rich children, the, other with poor; the one highly
fanciful, the other full of a touching actuality, the very essence
of a life such as that led by the listeners themselves. Unlike the
novel which commends itself to the world's grown children, these
narratives had by no means necessarily a happy ending; for one thing
Emma saw too deeply into the facts of life, and was herself too sad,
to cease her music on a merry chord; and, moreover, it was half a
matter of principle with her to make the little ones thoughtful and
sympathetic; she believed that they would grow up kinder and more
self-reliant if they were in the habit of thinking that we are ever
dependent on each other for solace and strengthening under the
burden of life.
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