Looking South

'A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will--
And here's a ready hand
To ply the needful tool,
And skill'd enough, by lessons rough,
In Labour's rugged school.'
HOOD.

Higgins's door was locked the next day, when they went to pay
their call on the widow Boucher: but they learnt this time from
an officious neighbour, that he was really from home. He had,
however, been in to see Mrs. Boucher, before starting on his
day's business, whatever that was. It was but an unsatisfactory
visit to Mrs. Boucher; she considered herself as an ill-used
woman by her poor husband's suicide; and there was quite germ of
truth enough in this idea to make it a very difficult one to
refute.

Still, it was unsatisfactory to see how completely her
thoughts were turned upon herself and her own position, and this
selfishness extended even to her relations with her children,
whom she considered as incumbrances, even in the very midst of
her somewhat animal affection for them. Margaret tried to make
acquaintances with one or two of them, while her father strove to
raise the widow's thoughts into some higher channel than that of
mere helpless querulousness. She found that the children were
truer and simpler mourners than the widow. Daddy had been a kind
daddy to them; each could tell, in their eager stammering way, of
some tenderness shown some indulgence granted by the lost father.