Page:Traits and Trials.pdf/74

68, but he was too much interested in the subject not to be a most attentive auditor; and, though he could sometimes have spared their exercise, he had a high idea of his wife's abilities.

"I take great blame to myself," said Mrs. Dalton.

"I really do not know for what," interrupted her husband.

"You are very kind to say so," replied she; "but I do blame myself very much, I have allowed a false delicacy to carry me too far. I ought to have interfered more than I have done hitherto. I ought not to have allowed the dread of any invidious construction to interfere with what I knew to be right. Eda is, as you truly say, a good, faithful creature, but ignorant and prejudiced to the last degree; I can forgive her dislike to myself, however unjust, but I now regret that I have allowed her to influence the children as it has done; I do not often complain, but I cannot tell you how it hurt me this morning when the children told me, 'Indeed I was not their own