I’ve been reading Anne of Ingleside in the boxed set of Anne of Green Gables books we bought for our daughters for Christmas. Anne is grown up in this novel, married to handsome doctor Gilbert Blythe — and the mother of six children!

As she is settling her son, Jem, to sleep one night, he asks her:

Mummy, will you tell me a bedtime story that will send a cold chill down my spine? And sit beside me afterwards till I go to sleep?

And I love Anne’s answer:

What else are mothers for, darling?