Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/56

32 On the whole, it is no wonder that Mrs. Glover was not taken seriously in her own town. Artificiality spread over all her acts, and in no relation in life did she impress even her nearest friends or her own family with genuine feeling or sincerity. Indeed, she was bitterly censured in those years for the more active faults of selfish and unfilial conduct and a strange lack of the sense of maternal duty. In 1851 Mrs. Glover had given her son, George, to Mahala Sanborn. The boy, having reached the age of seven, was growing too large to be sent about from one house to another to be looked after. Mrs. Glover's mother had died of typhoid fever in November, 1849, and Mrs. Tilton was growing each year more impatient and weary of Mrs. Glover's conduct. So when Mahala Sanborn married Russell Cheney and was preparing to move away from Tilton, Mrs. Glover begged her to take George to live with her permanently. Mrs. Cheney, who was attached to the boy, at last consented to do so, and George accompanied her and her husband to their new home in North Groton, and was called by their name.

Mark Baker, in the fall of 1850, had married Mrs. Elizabeth Patterson Duncan, a widow of Londonderry, N. H., and moved into the village of Tilton. Mrs. Glover continued to live at home, spending most of her time there now, for her stepmother was of a pliable nature and gentle disposition, and had taken up the task of attending to Mary's wants with a patience equal to that of Mrs. Glover's own mother.

Notwithstanding Mrs. Glover's shortcomings of temper, she could be amiable and attractive enough when she chose. To men she always showed her most winning side, and she had