The New Mother: With a Poem by Lola Ridge

“The New Mother” is an 1882 short story by Lucy Clifford. The story centres around two young girls who live with their mother and baby sibling in the woods. One day they happen across strange girl who promises to show them a tiny man and woman who live in her guitar if they are naughty enough. Excited by this offer, they return home and try to be as badly behaved as possible, to which their mother responds with threats of leaving and the arrival of a new mother with “glass eyes and a wooden...