Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/79

Rh wish to regulate the lives of those dear to them. They were a bit impatient of that quiet unfoldment of destiny which was now dealing with their sister Mary. They could not help discussing her future. They would have liked some definite arrangement for her, especially about her child.

But Mary was performing a sacred duty under their unseeing eyes. While the family talked of Tilton’s tweed, the new Darling mill, workmen’s cottages, and the spur of railroad that would facilitate the shipping, — affairs of such importance in the advancement of the family that their discussion came into the family circle, — Mary’s discerning eyes were watching her mother, for her mother was dying. The daughter was receiving the content of the mother’s stored-up spiritual treasury and was assisting at the loosening of the earth fetters.

Mrs. Baker had enjoyed the new home in town less than a year. She did not bear the transplanting from her rural life. In November, 1849, she died, and her death caused some important changes in the life which flowed around her youngest child. George Baker married Martha Drew Rand a few months before his mother’s death and went to Baltimore to establish himself in mills in that city. About a year later, in the fall of 1850, Mark Baker married Mrs. Elizabeth Patterson Duncan, a well-to-do widow, whose brother was an influential man of affairs in New York and a lieutenant-governor of that state. These events occurred five years after Mrs. Glover returned to her father’s house a widow.

Now Mrs. Glover had not been idle all these