100 
jack’s parents. 
business, for be bad little left for bis own. 
He had one great misfortune,—an ill- 
tempered, gossiping and untidy wife. Mrs. 
Short had, as some of her neighbours said, 
no “ faculty.” She had never learned a great 
deal of housekeeping in her youth; and 
what little she had learned she seemed to 
have forgotten. It is said of some people 
that they never do any thing by halves. 
Mrs. Short, on the contrary, never half did 
any thing. The clothes she made for her 
children came to pieces directly, and were 
never whole or clean. “ She could not get 
time,” she said, “to fix up her children as 
some people did.” She could not get time 
to comb their hair, or wash them clean, or 
get them ready for church, for Sunday or 
day schools,—to see that they did not tell 
lies, or swear, or take what did not belong to 
them. Jack, who was growing a great boy, 
she was glad to keep^ out of the house on 
any terms; and Sarah Anne (a really well- 
disposed child, who would gladly have gone 
to school regularly) was kept at home as 
much as three days in the week, while her 
mother “just ran in to the neighbours’ ” or 
“ went to the village on an errand;” for, with 
