Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/225

Rh boys would romp in her room sometimes rather boisterously, but she never seemed to mind it. Our times together alone were quieter. When she finally left our house it seemed to me my heart would break.

“But a coolness grew up in the family toward our guest. I don’t know how it came about. My father thought she absorbed my mother too much and that she was weaning me away from them. Perhaps she was unconsciously, for she made a great deal of me. Yet her influence over me was always for good. We read good books and talked of spiritual things. She loved nature; she was cultivated and well-bred. Her manners seemed to me so beautiful that I imitated her in everything. I never missed any one as I missed her. She said good-by to me with great affection, held me in her arms and looked long into my eyes. ‘You, too, will turn against me some day, Lucy,’ she said. And if I have seemed to, did I not have reason? Why did she never write to me? I have never heard from her, not one word since she left our house thirty-five years ago.”

It was not in Mary Baker’s nature to wean a child from its parents. She had had her own heart-breaking experience of this herself. Her experiences with the Wentworths, following upon her experiences with the Crafts, taught her to avoid in the future a too close mingling with another family. And her conclusions were based on just analysis of human nature. Richard Kennedy of Boston, an early student with Mrs. Eddy, in commenting upon her relations with this family, made these observations to