Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/88

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS she noted down; and later, when her dearest brother came home, she would ask him its meaning. And he helped his little sister so willingly, and lovingly.

If she had not had her loving Father, her dear brother and her books, she could not have lived through the sorrowful years. Father and brother stilled the yearning for love and affection, and the books gave to her hungry spirit food.

A little brother was born, and this helpless baby held Ni back from misfortune; he brought her again into the good path from which she had begun to wander. She was fast becoming a bad child toward her Mother. She had closed her heart more and more toward her, and the little brother made the doors of that heart spring wide open again. Little brother taught her what a mother is, and what a child owes to its mother.

Mother had dark rings under her eyes, and looked weak and worn out, and little brother had done that; little brother who would not let her rest, but called her every night again and again. Never mind how wearisome the heavy burden might be, there was never a single expression of impatience on Mother's face; whenever little brother cried for her, in a second she was by him. She would take him up and never lay him out of her arms till he was in a sweet sleep. Had Mother held her, too, and never put her down, till she was sound asleep? The ice-crust around Ni's heart melted, and it beat warmly once more toward the woman who had given her life.

Brother was a healthy child during his first year, but when he was weaned, and for three years after that the little one was sick, as though he kept wrestling with death. And by his sick bed, Ni the young child, learned to understand her Mother.

She saw her own shortcomings; she was too selfish, she was always —66—