Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/100

62 as low-voiced and gentle, but insistent on perfect housekeeping.

She not only befriended the blind girl, but was kind to her sister, who said, “I thought it the most beautiful home in the world. I was a child of ten and used to visit my sister Myra. I remember well how Mrs. Patterson would call me to her room, lay down her book, and place her thin white hand on my head or stroke my cheek. She wished to comfort me, for I had lately lost a good father.”

Of Mrs. Eddy’s extreme invalidism at this time there is no doubt. “I had the honor to take care of Mrs. Eddy once,” said a very old woman of Groton. “She was all alone in her home and I heard her bell ringing. I went in and found her lying rigid with foam on her lips. I brought her around with cold water. She motioned to her medicine chest, and I gave her what she wanted. Then I sat with her till she got better.”

She was indeed far from well, but Mrs. Patterson had come to Groton to be with her boy. Her desire for him amounted to a passionate hunger of maternity, and he, when he had seen his mother again, was as eager to be with her. But now a peculiar jealousy interfered between mother and son. He would come to his mother in spite of the injunctions of his foster parents and his stepfather, and once broke through the window to get into her room. Dr. Patterson would find him there with his books, leaning upon his mother’s couch, while she examined his progress in studies, a poor progress indeed as she found. The blind servant stated that