noon
In a very pretty little village not many miles from N -- , in Connecticut , lived Susan Meredith . She was the youngest of three sisters , the eldest of whom could not be more than twelve or thirteen years of age . A year or two before the period when our history of this little group commences , the mother had gone to her rest . Weighed down with a sorrow too heavy to be borne , and of a nature too delicate to be confided to others , she sank under it while in the noon of life , and died commending her children to God . Susan -- little Sue , as she was frequently called -- young as she was , remembered a thousand incidents connected with the departed one , and seemed , so late as the time at which our story begins , to be never happier than when her mother was the theme of conversation . There was something remarkable in this . One reason for it might have been , that the surviving parent of these sisters , though once a kind and affectionate father , was now so altered by habits of intemperance , that they found very little enjoyment in his society .