**A Stepmother with a Mothers Heart**
The wedding celebrations had only just faded when the family gathered one last time, laughing and dancing, unaware it would be their final reunion. Only the mother-in-law, Margaret, sat scowling. She couldnt stand her frail, delicate daughter-in-law, Emily. «Pretty enough, Ill give her that,» she muttered, «but what good is beauty if she cant lift a log or carry a bucket? Ive worked like a plough horse all my life, and now my son brings home this slip of a girluseless as an extra mouth to feed!»
Emilys own mother, Susan, had feared this. She knew Margarets strengthhow shed single-handedly changed roof beams, ploughed fields, and stacked hay faster than a team of men. «What kind of woman could ever match her?» Susan wondered. Yet Emily, stubborn and in love, dismissed her worries. «Shell soften with age,» she told herself, clinging to her husband, James.
But war loomed, and happiness slipped away like sand. Six months after the wedding, James was called to the front. Margaret, hardened by a life of toil, had never loved her own husbanda quiet, drink-sodden widower her mother had pushed her toward for survival. The only joy shed known was raising James, her stepson, with a mix of fierce discipline and rough affection. «Youll marry a strong lass one day,» shed told him, cupping his face in her calloused hands. «And Ill keep an eye on things, mind you.»
Now, with James gone, Margarets shoulders sagged. Emily, weak from pregnancy and hunger, was little helpspilling water, struggling with dough, her hands too small to milk the cow properly. «Useless girl,» Margaret grumbled, though her sharp words held no malice, only fear. When Emilys sickness worsened, Margaret shoved pickled cucumbers and buttered bread at her. «Eat, girl. Youll need your strength.»
Letters from James grew scarce. Margaret knelt by the hearth, praying: «Take my strength, Lord, give it to my boy.» She hid Emilys pregnancy, fearing bad news would break him. Then came the night of the birtha storm howling, the midwife miles away. Margaret harnessed the horse, bundled Emily into the cart, and drove through the gale. Five brutal hours later, a son was born. Weak but alive, Emily whispered, «Well wait for James together.»
Margaret, once unyielding, became a doting grandmother, stitching baby clothes from her husbands old shirts. Emily grew stronger, mastering chores under her watchful eye. Still, no word came from James. Then, one summer day, their boy, little Henry, collided with a strangers legs in the dusty lane. A soldier knelt, laughingJames, home at last.
Margaret watched them embrace, her heart swelling. Happiness, she realized, wasnt just a feelingit was this: her son, his family, safe in her arms.
