She made Betty see it all.
The apparent natural inevitableness of their being turned out of the
cottage, because another man must have it; the years during which
she worked her way while the ten were growing up, having measles, and
chicken pox, and scarlet fever, one dying here and there, dropping out
quite in the natural order of things, and being buried by the parish in
corners of the ancient church yard. Three of them "was took" by scarlet
fever, then one of a "decline," then one or two by other illnesses. Only
four reached man and womanhood. One had gone to Australia, but he never
was one to write, and after a year or two, Betty gathered, he had seemed
to melt away into the great distance. Two girls had married, and Mrs.
Welden could not say they had been "comf'able." They could barely feed
themselves and their swarms of children. The other son had never been
steady like his father. He had at last gone to London, and London had
swallowed him up. Betty was struck by the fact that she did not seem
to feel that the mother of ten might have expected some return for her
labours, at eighty-three.
Her unresentful acceptance of things was at once significant and
moving. Betty found her amazing.
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