(68)
undertake the office. Alas! what have I to do in the house of feasting?
Maria! I fear, left my griefs should prove obtrusive. Yet bear with me a little—I have recovered already a share of my former spirits.
I fear more for Allan than myself. The loss of two such parents, with so short an interval, bears very heavy on him. The boy hangs about me from morning till night. He is perpetually forcing a smile into his poor pale cheeks—you know the sweetness of his smile, Maria.
To-day, after dinner, when he took his glass of wine in his hand, he burst into tears, and would not, orcould
