Chapter I: SEEM to have wandered a long way from Eileen, but it was really she (2)

“Fresh paper on the dresser?” I exclaimed, and went hurriedly into the kitchen. Sure enough, the dresser, the pantry and scullery shelves, and all other available surfaces, including the deep window-sill and the tops of the safes, had been carefully covered with white paper; prompt investigation proved them to be pages from some of the various MSS. I had left in piles on the settle when I went out. Of course the writing was face downwards. I lifted things and examined what was beneath. The vegetable dishes on the dresser were reposing on portions of a serial story; canisters, saltbox and biscuit-tins shared the back of one of a series of Nature Study articles; the Siberian wolves were gnashing their horrid fangs beneath the knife-machine. I left the anonymous letter to an amiable if inglorious end, laid along the saucepan shelf, but I hurriedly collected the rest to the accompaniment of Eileen’s plaintive tones—

“I thought you had put them there for waste paper. And the back of every sheet was so beautifully clean, and I had made my kitchen look _so_ nice with them.”

All of which goes to illustrate the risk one runs in sending MSS. to editors, more especially to feminine editors possessed of kitchens.

* * * * *

Though the fall of snow did not last very long, the wind howled and moaned around the house all the evening, and roared in the wide chimneys like a 32-feet open diapason pedal pipe. Virginia suggested to Eileen that she should go out and put a little salt on the wolves’ tails to see if that would quiet them.

I thoroughly enjoy the moaning of the wind if I am surrounded by creature comforts—a big fire, a good cup of tea, or something interesting in that line. I never feel a desire for intellectual or introspective pursuits when the moan is most robust. When a raw nor’wester or a bullying sou’wester howls outside the door and windows, making the pine trees creak and groan like the wheels of an old timber waggon, and the evergreen firs wildly wave their branches like long dark plumes, I want to be able to hug myself to myself in the midst of warmth and good cheer, and in the company of some congenial fellow being. Then I give the fire a further poke and another log, remarking contentedly: “Just _hark_ at the wind! _What_ a night! Isn’t it cosy indoors!” And the brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and the plates and jugs and dishes on the dresser blink acquiescence.

Under such circumstances I love the howlers on these hills. But if I were a studious ascetic, burning the midnight oil—and very little else—I’m afraid that the sound of the wailing up and down the scale in minor sixths, coupled with the lack of comforting food and blazing fire and sympathetic companionship, would make me desperately melancholy indeed.

Now we were indoors we could defy the weather, and here at least firewood was plentiful—not the “five sticks a penny, take it or leave it,” that had been our portion in town, but as much as ever one wanted, and plenty more where the last came from. We soon had crackling blazes all over the house, and you should have seen Eileen’s almost awestruck countenance when she was told to make herself a fire in her own bedroom! “_Now_ I know what it’s like to be the Queen!” she exclaimed.

I had been literally fire-starved, owing to the need for economizing on fuel in town; and now I was loose among my own woods again, with snapped branches lying in all directions among the undergrowth, I went in for an orgy of warmth. Large chunks of apple wood and stubby bits the wind had tossed down from the creaking fir-trees, made crackling glowing fires in the big open grates. An absurd butterfly unthawed itself from some crevice among the ceiling beams and came walking deliberately down the window curtain, evidently under the impression that he was in for a sultry summer.

* * * * *

For some time we sat and watched the splendour of it all.

When you are burning logs from old, sea-going ships, you see again the blue and saffron of the sky, and the green and peacock tints of the ocean; and in like manner you can see leaping from our forest logs the crimson and yellow and gold that once blazed in the autumn glory of the tree-covered hills, and the glow of the fire gives back the warmth and the sunshine that the trees caught in their leaves and cherished in their rugged branches.

* * * * *

I dropped off to sleep that night with the flickering fire-glow whispering of comfort and rest for body and brain. Yes, despite the soothing balm of it all, and the certainty of safety from “the terror that walks by night” so that one could sleep without that sense of constant listening that has become second nature with those of us who live in town, I could not enjoy it with the old-time zest. Who could, with the thought ever on one’s heart: what about this lad, and that one? where are _they_ lying this bitter night?

Physical sense becomes numbed when one lives perpetually in the shadow of possible tragedy.

* * * * *

Probably it was the after-effect of our struggle with the wind and weather that caused us all to sleep very soundly that night; at any rate, it was broad daylight before anyone stirred in the cottage next morning, and we missed the doings of the storm king in the interval. When I first opened my eyes I wondered what the white light could be that was reflected on the ceiling. Then I looked out of the window, and what a scene it was! The whole earth, so far as the eye could see, was one vast fairyland of snow; moreover, the face of creation appeared to have risen three or four feet nearer the bedroom window since last I had looked out, though the full import of this did not occur to me at the moment. I could merely look and look at the wonderful transformation that had been effected so rapidly and so silently while we slept. All trace of the garden had disappeared; shrubs and trees alike were bowed down with billows of snow. In the more exposed places, the wind had blown some of the snow from the firs and larches, but for the most part the trees on the hillside were as laden with snow as those in the garden. We might have been high up in the Alps. The sun was trying to shine, and bringing a gleam and glint out of every snow crystal, but the sky still looked leaden in the north.

Eileen, bringing the morning tea, imparted the thrilling intelligence that the snow was several feet deep outside the doors, the outhouses inaccessible.

“Then we must clear the snow from the path ourselves,” I said. “There is nothing else for it.” The handy man was laid up with influenza in his home several fields away. And there was small likelihood of any other man coming our way. But the question of a few shovels of snow did not seem a serious matter; we were quite lighthearted about it.

When we made our first survey of the situation, however, we found that the snow was far higher outside the door than we had at first imagined. Owing to the position of the house, and the way it nestles back in a little hollow that has been cut out of the hillside to give it level standing room, special inducement had been offered to the snow to pile itself up in drifts and block each door in a most effectual manner. Still—that snow had to be cleared away somehow, and we stood in the doorway and discussed methods.

Hitherto I had always held the idea that people who allowed themselves to remain “snowed up” were very dull-witted and lacking in enterprise. Why not start clearing from the inside, beginning with the spadeful nearest the doorstep, and so go on clearing, space after space, until they had got through to the outer world? To me it seemed quite an easy thing to do if you went about it systematically. But one slight detail had never occurred to me, viz., what should be done with the first spadeful of snow when you shovelled it up from beside the doorstep, to say nothing of the next and the next! That was one of the questions that bothered us now, though it was not the first difficulty we encountered.

At the very outset, of course, we all said, “Just get a spade!” But, alas, the spade was locked up in one of the inaccessible outhouses! Next we called for a broom, but all brooms were in the same building. Then I said, “Well, bring some shovels.”

“Here’s the kitchen shovel,” said Eileen (Ursula pounced on that at once), “and here’s the scoop from the coal-scuttle, and here’s one of the small brass shovels from upstairs.”

“But where is the big iron shovel?” I asked.

“That’s in the coal-shed” (likewise inaccessible!). Virginia turned a deaf ear on the bedroom shovel, and possessed herself of the scoop. I had no alternative but to start work with the small brass affair that was about as effective as a fish-slice would have been!

We each shovelled up a mass (most of it tumbling off the shovel again before we got it into mid-air), and then we looked at each other and enquired what we were to do with it. It did not seem advisable to carry it inside the house; and the only alternative was to toss it a foot or two away from us; but then, that only meant adding to the pile already there, which in any case we should have to clear away before we could get anywhere! It _was_ a problem.

In the end we managed to clear about a square foot, and make a few small burrows in the mound around us, by throwing the snow as far away as we could each time. But what was that foot! We were still yards away from the coal-shed and the wood-house, with only a limited supply indoors, and still further away from the water. We had been working for a solid hour, and seemed to have raised a haystack of snow a little way off, where we had tossed our meagre shovelfuls. And then—as though to mock our feeble attempts—down came the snow again, and covered up the space we had cleared with such effort!

We looked at it in absolute despair.

“Why was I born an unmarried spinster?” exclaimed Ursula. “Oh, that a man would hove in sight—or whatever the present tense of ‘hove’ may be.”

But no man obligingly hove in response!

X

Footprints

THE snow was meaning to have a good time of it; there was no question about that. Further work in the clearing line was obviously impossible.

Virginia tilted up her coal-scoop in the porch, beside the pathetic remains of small brass shovel No. 1 (which broke in half quite early in the proceedings), and small brass shovel No. 2 (which also was giving wobbly indications of impending collapse). Ursula, possessing the only serviceable tool in the whole collection, had with unusual forethought carried in the kitchen shovel, and hidden it surreptitiously—realising that it was a much-coveted treasure at that moment.

But she did suggest that if we just took the ladder upstairs and let it down out of the end bedroom window she could climb down, and that would bring her close to the wood shed; she could get from the roof of that on to a low wall, and walk along the wall to the gate, which she would then climb over (as it was blocked each side with snow), and in this way she could get out into the lane to the spring of water, and bring back a can of water by the same route. This she would tie to a cord let down from the bedroom window, which could then be hauled up. Then she would get into the wood shed—which would not be difficult, as the door opened inwards, and would not be blocked by the snow on the inside; getting together some logs, she would next lash them up so that they also could be hauled up like the water; finally, she would herself return, _viâ_ the roof and the ladder and the bedroom window, to the bosom of the family.

This suggestion was received with gratitude, only everyone else wanted to take Ursula’s place, and make the tour instead of her. We pointed out to her that, as she had already meanly annexed the only workable shovel, she ought at least to relinquish the rôle of leading lady in this expedition. We might have wasted much time in arguing with her had not Eileen reminded us that the ladder—like everything else we needed—was up the garden safely snowed up under the laurel hedge. So that project fell through.

“We may as well leave that collection of old metal in the porch,” said Virginia, “since there is no fear of callers arriving and putting us to the blush this afternoon.” Then there was nothing left to do but to stamp off the snow, and shed rubbers, and ulsters, and scarfs, and woollen gloves, and possess our souls in patience indoors, till such time as the snow should give over.

“And to think how I’ve always prided myself on going away from home prepared for _every_ emergency!” sighed Virginia. “My dressing-case is simply crammed with such valuable data as a bandage for a possible sprained ankle, court plaster, a pocket-knife with a corkscrew on it, a specially strong smelling-bottle for fainty ones, a nightlight, a box of matches, ammoniated quinine, wedges for rattling windows, a box of tin-tacks—no, not a hammer, I always use the heel of my shoe—a two-foot rule—what should I want that for? I’m sure I don’t know, but then you never can tell! But with all my precautions, it never occurred to me to pack a spade and broom in with my luggage. This snowstorm has shown me the weak points in my outfit.”

“It has shown _me_ the weak points in my joints,” groaned Ursula. “And, moreover, I never knew before how many parts of us there were that could ache. I’m just painful from head to foot. I never realised what a noble, self-sacrificing calling snow-shovelling is. And when I think of the men who come round in town, offering to sweep the snow from the path—and a good long path too—for a few pence, it seems a positive scandal that they should get so little. I’m sure there is quite ten shillings’ worth of me used up already!”

We certainly did ache. And only those who have been suddenly called upon to attack a bank of snow, with inexperience and feeble tools, can know the extent of our stiffness. We were content to let it snow, without the slightest desire to crick our backs any further. And after all there is something exceedingly restful and soothing to over-worked brain and over-strained nerves, in merely sitting in a low chair by a roaring fire, taking only such exercise as is required to put on an extra log, secure in the knowledge that neither telegram, nor visitor, nor any communication whatsoever from the outside world can possibly break in upon the quiet and peace. You need to spend your life in the heart of the great metropolis, amid the never-ceasing turmoil of London streets, with your days one long maddening distraction of callers, telephone bells, endless queries and perpetual noise, to appreciate the joy of the solitude in that snowed-up cottage among the hills.

* * * * *

For long months and months the guns in Flanders had sent a muffled boom over my London garden every hour of the day, and had shaken my windows violently every hour of the night; and there is no need to set down in writing the ache and the anxiety that each dull thud brought to the heart. Every one who has husband or brother or son out yonder knows what question comes wafted over each time the guns send out their deadly roll.

But our craving for quiet was not a desire to get out of earshot of the guns. It dated farther back than the War; it was the inevitable outcome of the over-wrought hurry of the twentieth century, when one’s nerves get so frazzled in the vain attempt to do everything, and do it all at once, that at last life is simply one intense longing for that “nest in the wilderness” out of reach of the clamour of the market-place and the vain, foolish, soul-wearing struggle for material things.

In that enchanted period of life, known as “before the War,” we used often to discuss the desirability of moving to an uninhabited island and spending the rest of our days there in unalloyed peace. It had been an absorbing dream with me, ever since I first read Sarah Orne Jewett’s book, _The Country of the Pointed Firs_. I dare say it was selfish to think of being _quite_ out of reach of the noise and dirt and bustle and din of cities, and where there would be no next-door piano, and no gramophone in the house the other side, and no soots floating in the windows—but it was a very pleasant one, and I used to add to it occasionally by imagining what it would be like to wake up one morning and find that some unknown but generous friend had left me an uninhabited island as a legacy; one not far from the mainland, and somewhere around the British Isles, of course.

When such a thing happens, it will find me quite prepared, for we have built the house there, and furnished it, and mapped out our life there many and many a time; all I am waiting for is—the island! That seems hard to come by! I’ve had one or two offered me (not as gifts, but to purchase), like Lundy, for instance, but they cost too much and are not uninhabited. So we have still to content ourselves with plans only.

We were recalled to The Island (we always refer to it in capital letters) as we sat round the fire, by Virginia inquiring what books I should take with me when I moved there. She said she concluded that, being a booky sort of a person, a library would be an essential.

But I set my face firmly against taking unnecessary literature. My house gets choked with books, ninety per cent. of which I never open a second time. I am for ever turning them out, and yet they go on accumulating. Virginia has a perfect mania for hoarding impossible books, that she could never find time to read through again if she lived to be the age of Methuselah; yet she keeps them all, on the chance that some day she may require to refer to a solitary sentence in one of them. Her cupboards are full, and her shelves are packed behind and before, and she has had sets of drawers made just to hold “papers”; which means hundredweights of abstruse pamphlets, and learned magazines, and cuttings—well, I dare say you know the sort of girl she is, and what it’s like when their flat gets spring-cleaned, and she insists that no one must lay a finger on _her_ books!

Ursula isn’t much better; but at least she is more practical, and believes in spring cleaning; hence, in _her_ case, she does have a turn-out occasionally, and just throws away indiscriminately whole shelf-loads of books in a fit of desperation, when she has managed to get every article in the flat jumbled up in a heap in the room it has no business in, and no one can find anything. I believe at such time she surreptitiously disposes of some of Virginia’s tomes, too; but this I only suspect. At any rate, Virginia is always bewailing a number of “_most_ important books” that never can be found after one of Ursula’s domestic upheavals.

Knowing all this, I said that only a definite number of books would be allowed on The Island. Both girls said it would be impossible to fix any limit that would meet the case. I said I was quite sure humanity, more especially the intellectual feminine portion of it, could do with far less books than they thought they could.

Vehement protests!

Then I suggested, to prove my words, that we should each start to make out a list of the books we couldn’t possibly do without on The Island—_only_ those we couldn’t possibly do without—and see what it amounted to. “Jot down any book or author that occurs to us as being essential, irrespective of any sort of classification,” I said. “And we had better compare notes every ten books, as we go along.”

Forthwith, we each scribbled down our first ten _absolutely indispensable_ books (they were to be exclusive of religious and devotional works). When we compared notes in a few minutes’ time, these were our lists:—

VIRGINIA.

Encyclopædia.
A Dictionary.
Jane Austen’s Novels.
“The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain.”
A Time Table.
Franklin’s “Voyages.”
“Punch” (regularly).
A good Atlas.
“The Spectator” (regularly).
“A Child’s Garden of Verse.” R. L. Stevenson.

URSULA.

A good Guide to London.
A large selection of Needlework and Crochet Books.
My old Scrapbook.
Mudie’s Catalogue.
An Almanac giving the changes of the moon.
“The Old Red Sandstone.” Hugh Miller.
The Stores Price List.
Mrs. Hemans’ Poems.
The Scottish Student’s Song Book.
Kipling’s “Kim.”

SELF.

All Ruskin’s Works.
“The Wide, Wide World.”
“The Country of the Pointed Firs.” S. O. Jewett.
All my Gardening Books and Florists’ Seed Catalogues.
All my Wild Flower Books.
“A Little Book of Western Verse.” Eugene Field.
Poems by Ann and Jane Taylor.
All my Cookery Books.
All the Board of Agriculture’s Leaflets.
A Book on Deer Culture.

Of course, we each gazed in profound surprise and contempt on the others’ lists, and asked why this and that had been put down. Why did Ursula want a guide to London, when the object of going to The Island was to get away from London?

She said she thought you ought to keep in touch with things even if you were away; and if it came to that, why did I want a Deer book, since I couldn’t look at venison?

I said I felt it in me that I should start keeping deer as soon as I landed, and there was more sense in doing that than in reading a Time Table, for instance!

Virginia protested a Time Table was absolutely essential, else how would you ever be able to get away when you wanted to? And you never knew _when_ you might be summoned to anyone’s funeral in a hurry, and was she supposed to be cut off from _all_ human enjoyment? Whereas no one could possibly want a Student’s Song Book, when they couldn’t sing two notes in tune; and, also, why Mrs. Hemans, might she venture to ask?

“Yes, who would dream of carting around a Mrs. Hemans in these days?” I scoffed.

“The frontispiece engraving of Mrs. Hemans always reminded me of mother’s Aunt Matilda,” said Ursula impressively. “I only saw her twice, but on the first occasion she gave me a doll, and on the second a blue and white bead necklace; I’ve got three of the beads left, in my workbox. And I’ve always loved beads, and I loved her in consequence, and I wouldn’t dream of being parted from Mrs. Hemans. And, in any case, why bring a Dictionary?”

“Because I may require to look up a more expressive word occasionally, or enlarge my flow of vocabulary,” Virginia explained. “And I conclude I’m not expected to be absolutely dumb when we get there!”

Of course, I don’t mean to imply that these are necessarily the books we should have named had we sat down thoughtfully to compile a list most representative of our tastes and needs; but whatever list I had made, I’m sure I should have included the volumes I named; and it goes to show that the books that make an individual appeal to us are not necessarily those that our friends expect us to name.

The library catalogue was never completed, for, before we had time further to criticize each other’s preferences, we were pulled up short by a sound.

We all stopped our chatter on an instant, for surely and certainly there could be no mistaking it, there was the ring of an iron spade chinking on stone! When last we had looked out, just after breakfast, not a stone had been visible for a spade to chink against in the whole vicinity. We flew to the door, and there, touching his hat with a smiling “Good morning, ma’am,” stood the elderly handy man who ought to have been in bed with his bad cold; and behold, a clear path to the lane. He had worked from the gate inwards, and we had been so busy with our discussions indoors, we had not heard him till he reached the porch.

“I was only able to get down downstairs yesterday,” the invalid explained. “But in any case it wasn’t no good coming over till that spell o’ snow was down, even if I’d been fit to come out.” Then, after a detailed description of symptoms and sufferings and so forth—“Yes, I think there’s a good bit more to come down yet. Nothing won’t be able to be got up from the village yet awhile; they tell me the drifts is eight feet deep in places. Maybe in a few days I’ll be able to get down. I’ll be wanting some sharps soon myself for the fowls, so I’ll have to try and get down by the end of the week. And the butcher’s killing himself this week, I could bring you up a j’int. I’ve knocked up a good bit of kindling wood in the wood shed, so you’ll be all right now.”

Yes, we were all right now, from one point of view; but I devoutly hoped he would not wait till the end of the week before he went for those “sharps,” for I had discovered that we had _only one loaf in the house_! And as they only bake twice a week in our village, and everyone knows how long war bread won’t keep, I need only add that already we had to cut off all the outside before bringing it to table, and by to-morrow it would be quite gorgonzola-ish right through!

As soon as he had gone, Ursula burst forth, “Don’t talk to me any more of the rights of women”—no one had been, but we let it pass—“don’t tell me they are the equals of men, and that all they want is a good education and scope for their energies. Look at us, haven’t _we_ all had good educations?” (Ursula and her sister are thoroughly acquainted with the literature of several European countries; they read Plato in the original; and can give you reliable information on such points as the similarity between the tribes on the borders of Tibet and the Patagonians—if any exists. They can certainly be called well educated.) “And wasn’t there scope enough for our energies out there? And then consider what we accomplished! While a man like that comes along—says he never went to school in his life, just risen from a sick bed, too, so none too strong—yet in an hour or so he’s done what _we_ should not have got through in a month. And look at the neat job he’s made of it, with the snow banked up trimly on each side; why, we were about as effective and as artistic as three fowls scratching on the surface of things. And then look at the stack of wood he got ready in no time. I’m sure I blushed to see him gazing at that collection of decrepit shovels standing in the porch——”

“And well you might blush,” edged in Virginia, “remembering how you selfishly stuck to the only decent shovel there was, with never so much as an offer to either of us to have a turn.”

“—Yes, we ought to have votes, we’re so—capable!” Ursula went on, but I begged her not to worry her head about votes just now, as the question of food was of greater national importance.

At the word “food” of course everyone was all attention, and we made ourselves into a Privy Council, and they appointed me Food Controller, because it would give them the right to do all the grumbling. But the matter was not quite as much of a joke as they thought. For so long they had been accustomed to a pantry stocked with bottles and tins and stores of all descriptions (and Virginia once remarked that to read the labels alone—if you had lost the tin-opener—was quite as good as a seven-course meal at a fashionable restaurant), that they forgot things were not like that now! In the dairy, too (which we use as a larder), it was the usual pre-war thing to see large open jam tarts in deep dishes, with a fancy trellis work over the top of the jam, and large pies with lovely water-lilies, made from the scraps of paste, on top, and spicy brown cakes, with a delicious odour, standing on the stone slabs—Abigail being a capital hand at pastry and cakes. The dairy is built on the north side, close under the hill, and the great stone wall that keeps the hill from tumbling down on top of the dairy is packed with hart’s-tongue and the British maiden-hair fern, and rosettes of the pretty little scaly spleenwort, and lacy tufts of wall rue, and practically every other kind of fern that loves damp shade and the English climate. And ivy runs over the lot right up to the top, where wild roses and honeysuckle and blackberry ramp about in the sunshine, and often peep down to see how it fares with their comrades in the cool ravine below. The long fronds of the fern wave in at the dairy window, and the ivy sends out little fingers, catching hold wherever it can, and creeping in, very much at home, through the wire-netting that does duty for a window. My guests always like to go into the dairy to see the wonderful array of ferns; but I sometimes suspect it is also to gaze on the appetizing-looking things that appeal irresistibly to all who have spent an hour or two in our hungry air!

But war had made a considerable difference alike to pantry and store-cupboard and larder, and we had to trust to the promise of Miss Jarvis, the lady at the village shop—and one of the most valuable members of the community—that we should not actually starve! As the stocks had been used, they had not been replenished. Cinnamon buns, lemon-curd cheese cakes, fruit cakes with a nice crack in the top, were no longer piled up in the larder. No home-cured ham, sewn up in white muslin, hung from the big hook in the kitchen ceiling. No large, dried, golden-coloured vegetable marrows hung up beside it for winter use.

We had plenty of potatoes, fortunately (and never had we valued potatoes as we did this year!), and we had the usual “remains” that are in the larder, when the butcher has not called for a few days and a family lives from hand to mouth, as one has had to do recently, lest one should be suspected of hoarding!

There was a tin of lunch biscuits, some cheese, and cereals; but the rest of the store cupboard seemed exasperatingly useless when it came to sustaining life in a snow-bound household. What good was a tin of linseed, for instance, or a bottle of cayenne, or a bottle of evaporated horse-radish (with the sirloin presumably still gambolling about somewhere in the valley)? Why had I ever laid in a bottle of tarragon vinegar, a bottle of salad dressing, a box of rennet tablets, a tin of curry powder, desiccated cocoanut, a bottle of chutney? Even the tin of baking powder and the nutmegs and capers seemed extravagant and superfluous. Oh, for a simple glass of tongue—but we had opened our only one the day we arrived!

One thing was certain: while the snow remained at its present depth, to say nothing of an increase, no provisions could be got up from the village. The steep roads were like glass the last time we were out; now they would be impassable for horses or vehicles, even though a man might manage to get over them somehow. Milk we could obtain from a neighbouring farm, perhaps a few eggs, possibly a fowl as a very special favour, now that our path was cleared; but that was the utmost we could hope to raise locally. The point to be considered was: How long could we hold out?

“Well, there is only one other thing I can think of,” said Virginia; “you must fly signals of distress, and hoist a flag up at the top of the chimney—they always do in books. . . . How are you to get the flag up the chimney? I’m sure _I_ don’t know if you don’t! What’s the good of being an editor if you don’t know a simple little thing like that?”

But the problem was solved for me by a tap at the door, and then one realised the superiority of the servants of the Crown over all ordinary individuals. It was the postman. He said “Good morning” with the modest air of one who knows he has accomplished a great deed, but leaves it for others to extol.

“I’ve brought up the letters,” he said; “but I couldn’t get up the parcels to-day. There are a good many.” I knew what that meant. My post is necessarily a very heavy one, more especially when I am away from town, and great packages of things are sent down daily. “Is there anything I can take back with me?” he inquired.

I hastily scribbled some telegrams on urgent matters, glad of this chance to get them sent off; and I knew the Head of Affairs would be glad to hear we were all well. As I handed them to the man, he rather hesitatingly produced a bulky newspaper parcel that had been hidden under his big mackintosh cape, with an apologetic look, as it were, to the Crown, that the garment should have been put to so unofficial an use. Then in an undertone, lest the Postmaster-General in London might overhear, he said—

“Miss Jarvis was afraid you might be running short of things.” The thoughtful Lady of the Village Shop had sent up a loaf, a piece of bacon and a pound of sugar. How I blessed her!

Next day he managed to get up some of the small postal packages. The first one I opened was from one of the Assistant Editors in town.

“I see in the papers that you’ve had a heavy fall of snow,” she wrote, “and as there was not a solitary line from you this morning, I’m wondering if you are isolated? At any rate, I’m sending you a home-made cake and a box of smoked sausages by this post (instead of MSS.) in case you may be cut off from supplies.”

“If that isn’t bed-rock common sense,” said Ursula. “Most intelligent girls would have improved the occasion by sending you newspaper cuttings with statistics of the latest submarine sinkings, to keep your spirits up.”

Another slight fall of snow was all the late afternoon brought us, not enough to spoil the newly cleared path, but sufficient to reveal the fact next morning that someone with large masculine boots had been promenading round the cottage, for there were the footprints, a clear track that even a detective could not have failed to see, leading from the gate to the outhouses, from the outhouses to the scullery door, from the scullery door to the best door (it’s absurd to call it the front door, because each side is as much the front as the other excepting the part that backs into the hill!), from the best door to the door with the porch, and so on, out of the gate again.

As none of us knew anything about them, we concluded the handy man must have returned, bent on some new errand of mercy. But he disowned them; had not been near the place since the previous forenoon, and the snow had not fallen till five o’clock. It looked exceedingly queer, not to say uncanny, and we recalled the fact that the dog had barked violently after we were in bed. So far as I knew, there was no resident on those hills who would think of wandering round the house after dark; and no tramp or odd wayfarer would ever scale those heights unless he had some very urgent reason for so doing, and had a definite destination. It is too stiff a climb to take on a casual chance of picking up anything; moreover, unless a man knew his way, he would soon lose himself. Though the footprints really perplexed me, I did not say very much about them; but Eileen did.

When Mr. Jones from a neighbouring farm arrived with milk, I heard the full description being given him at the kitchen door. He expressed due interest, and described a mysterious case he had just read about, in the weekly paper, of a servant who had disappeared from a house in London where she had been in service for years, and no trace of her had been found since. Eileen and he agreed as to the many points of similarity between the two cases.

When the lad from the butcher’s came to know what portion I wished to bespeak of the sheep they would be killing, come Friday, I heard Eileen once more going through the story of the footprints, combined with details of the missing domestic. He, in turn, told her how a burglar had been one morning in a house next door to his grandmother’s in Bristol, and how, when they chased him, he jumped right over the garden wall, into the very dish of potatoes his aunt was peeling for his dinner. (The pronouns were confusing, but I don’t think it was for the burglar’s dinner the potatoes were intended.)

The farmer’s daughter who came to inquire if I would like a fowl, after hearing the story, offered to lend Eileen a novelette she had just been reading, where there were footprints exactly like these; and in the last chapter it turns out that the footprints were those of—I forget who or what, but it was very enthralling, and Eileen gratefully jumped at the offer of the loan.

The old man who came to say that they couldn’t deliver any coals till the weather broke, remarked that he didn’t like the look of it at all, and said he should be quite nervous if he were she, and asked her if she had heard about the old woman who had been found dead in her bed in Yorkshire, died of cold, and fifty golden sovereigns tied up in the middle of her pillow? Eileen had not heard of it. The old man said it was as well to keep your eyes open, as there were funny people in the world, and this seemed to him just such another affair.

And much more to the same effect.

* * * * *

That night I was suddenly awakened by a sound, though at first I could not tell what it was. I lay wide awake, holding my breath: then it came again, a gentle rasp, rasp, as though someone were scraping something with a metal tool. At the same moment I heard Virginia and Ursula stirring in the next room. I stole in to them; they too were listening. And then we realised that the burglar had really come! From the direction of the sound we knew he was scraping away the putty, or something of the sort, from a pane of glass that was let into the scullery door. If he managed to get through that, he could undo the bolt, and would be free of the place.

What were we to do, we asked each other in whispers? Of course, previously, I had always known what I should do if a burglar ever came to my house. I should go downstairs, throw open the door and confront him unafraid, asking him in a firm but most melodious voice what had brought him to such a low moral depth, and urging him to better things. He would be so undone by the sight of me and the sound of the music of my voice, that he would crumple up at my feet and confess all his past burglaries. Whereupon, I should motion him to come in and take a seat, while I hastily prepared a cup of Bovril, and cut him a large plate of cold roast beef; and on his observing that I had passed him the mustard pot without first removing the silver spoon, he would be so overcome by my confidence in him that he would voluntarily vow to turn over a new leaf. He would leave with half-a-crown in his pocket. And years afterwards a prosperous man would knock at my door, bearing in his hand half-a-crown, etc.

But this particular case did not seem to fit in with my previous programme for the reception of burglars. In the first place there was no Bovril in the house; and secondly, there was no beef, only a tiny piece of cold mutton in the larder—and you can’t do anything heroic with only cold mutton.

Meanwhile the man was scraping away downstairs, and we did not know but what he would be in upon us any moment.

“Shall we let the dog loose?” said Virginia.

“The dog!” I repeated. “Why, where _is_ the dog? Why isn’t he barking?” Until that moment we had forgotten him entirely. There was no sound of him below; and he is a ferocious little thing if strangers come anywhere near the place.

“Oh, then they’ve poisoned him!” gasped Ursula, almost in tears. “They’ve got some poisoned meat in to him somehow, under the door perhaps, and he’ll be lying there a corpse, and we never thinking of him.” We all three crept as silently as we could downstairs, to find “the corpse” remarkably cheerful, with his nose at the crack of an outer door, every hair of his body on end with tension, his ears cocked up, and every muscle of him on the alert—but not a ghost of a bark did he give, only a perfunctory waggle of his tail, just as an acknowledgment of our presence, and an apology that he was too much engaged at the moment to give us more attention. There was not much poison about that dog! As the scraping got louder, and my teeth were chattering violently (but only with the cold, as I explained to the other two), I fled upstairs again, and they followed.

“What _do_ you usually do when burglars come?” whispered Virginia.

“I don’t know. I’ve never had one before,” I moaned.

“Didn’t you once tell me you had a bell, or something of the sort?” said Ursula.

“Why, yes; I had forgotten that.” I keep a huge bell under the bed at the head, and I always intended to ring it violently out of the window if a burglar ever came. (Scrape, scrape, scrape, continued down below.) “I don’t suppose anyone on these hills would wake up to listen; but, at any rate, it might worry the burglar and send him off.”

“Let’s ring it now,” said Virginia eagerly, “and then, when he is well _outside_ the gate, of course, we’ll let the dog run out after him.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “But first I want to go into Eileen’s room, and peep out of her window and see _who_ is below. Her window is just over the scullery door, and is always open at night. If it is anyone from the district—though I don’t believe it is—I should recognise him.”

So we tip-toed into Eileen’s room, where she lay sound asleep.

“When I give the signal, you ring,” I said.

Cautiously, slowly, silently, I got my head a little further and further out of the window, shaking with ague from head to foot. And there I saw the burglar—he was Farmer Jones’s dog (alias the wolf, you remember), and he had got hold of a sardine tin that had been emptied that day. He was having a lovely time, licking that tin out, and as he licked, so it scraped and scraped on the stones. No wonder my own dog did not bark; he knew it was his ancient enemy without, and the instinct of the dog of war was to wait stealthily till the foe should get within his reach.

“Don’t ring the bell!” I whispered hoarsely, and we crept out of the room.

“I think it’s just as well Eileen did not wake,” I said, as we made ourselves a midnight cup of tea before turning in again, “for I’ve no desire to hear _this_ episode being related all day long at the kitchen door!”

* * * * *

Have you ever sat by the fire indoors, when the ground has been covered with snow, and the sky grey and heavy, till you have been “absolutely _perished_ with the cold,” and then someone has come and dragged you out (or, if you have wonderfully uncommon sense, you have dragged yourself out), and plunged right into it—a shrivelled-up martyr! After ten minutes spent in trying to sweep the snow from the path, what have you felt like?

I plunged right out into it—simply because the two girls were bragging such a deal about their own heroic fortitude in forsaking the fireside at the call of life’s stern duties, or something like that. But first of all I put on a knitted hug-me-tight; then my leather motoring undercoat; then my big cloth coat; and finally, my mackintosh. I tied on a woollen sports cap with a winter motor scarf; I turned up my coat collar, and put on a fur necklet; and, of course, I didn’t forget gaiters and warm gloves.

Then I stood on the doorstep and looked out—if you believe me, the cold went right through me, and fairly rattled my bones inside.

Still, I wasn’t going to be outdone in misery by the other two, and noticing that the bushes were actually breaking down under the load of snow, I seized a broom and sallied forth. After all, if one has to die a martyr’s death, one may as well occupy the final moments in doing useful kindnesses for one’s family.

It is some sort of solace to picture how they will eventually say, “To think of her doing all that, when——”; or, “To the last she never gave in; why only the very day——!”; or, “Ah! how often have I seen the poor dear——!” etc.

So I made for the pink rhododendron, that was suffering badly; being evergreen, its large rosettes of leaves, surrounding each flower-bud of the future, had caught and held great masses of snow; the lower branches were literally buried beneath the heavy drifts.

But as I found I couldn’t get at it without clearing a way through a three-foot bank of snow, I set to work with a spade. It sounds simple enough, I know; but unless you’ve been getting your living at snow-clearing, you would never believe what a lot there is to it, when you start to make a nice serviceable path through a drift from two to three feet deep, and six feet long.

I reached the pink rhododendron at last. Getting my broom against a main stem, I shook it gently. What a lovely shower came down! I don’t know that I needed it all over me, personally; nor was it necessary to choke up half the cutting I had just made. Still, down it came, white billows and a rain of silver powder. I never knew what snow was really like, till I shook it all over me, and the sun suddenly came out and turned the cascade to a gleaming white radiance.

Having got well smothered to start with, I decided I might just as well go on; and that I could dispense with the motor undercoat, which I left hanging on the bush. Lower down the garden I could hear the clink and scrape of shovel and spade against the stones, as the other two cleared the snow from the various little flights of rough stone steps that take you up or down, from one level of the garden to another. But I didn’t feel like clearing steps just then; it was too niggly. I wanted something bigger than that, and I somehow had a desire to work alone, so I struck a path that went up the garden, and began to work my way towards the top gate, clearing as I went.

As I bent over the smooth glistening surface, I was amazed to see the number of messages written there for those who know the language of the wilds well enough to read them! What a scurrying to and fro of little feet had been going on since the snowfall, all on the one quest—food and water! Birds innumerable had left their signatures; some I knew, some I could not identify, save that they were birds. Rabbits I could trace; stoats, too, might have made some of the writing in the snow; and there were bigger tracks—perhaps a fox.

Everywhere there were tidings of other wayfarers, other workers, other seekers—the many other dwellers who have their homes somewhere between the larch-woods and the weir. The moment before the place had seemed a frost-locked, deserted, uninhabitable waste of snow; now I saw it was teeming with life, brave, persistent, not-to-be-daunted life, that in spite of cold and hardship and privation and a universal stoppage of supplies, still set out, with unquenchable faith, on the quest for the food which they have learnt to know is invariably forthcoming, “in due season.”

The surprising thing to me is the fact that such small bodies can ever survive such a welter of snow. Aren’t they afraid they will sink down and be swallowed up in it? Have they no fear lest they lose their way, with the old landmarks obliterated? Doesn’t it strike terror to the heart when they find their doorway blocked, and themselves snowed up in burrow or hole? Yet, judging by outside evidence, it would seem that none of these things daunt them; an obstacle is merely something to be surmounted.

To my mind the most pathetic thing about it all is the fact that their chief fear seems to be fear of human beings, a dread of the very ones who could, and ought to, befriend them.

In my clearing I moved a small wooden box that had been used for seedlings, and since had lain unnoticed beside a hedge. Underneath a tiny field mouse had taken refuge. It seemed almost paralysed with terror when I suddenly lifted the box, and escape was blocked on every side by banks of snow. The poor little thing just sat up on its hind legs and looked at me most pitifully. I can’t say that I exactly cultivate mice, in an ordinary way, but—here was a fellow-creature in distress, such a little one too; I couldn’t have refused its appeal. I quickly put the box over it again, and clearing a space by the hole it had used as a door, I put down some bird-seed—I always carry something in my coat pocket for the birds—and I went away. Ten minutes later, every bit was gone.

* * * * *

Working my way round to another thicket of rhododendrons, that is a bank of purple and creamy white in June, once more I sent the silver-dust flying with my trusty broom. As one great mass came hurtling down, it so deluged me that for the moment I had to hold my breath, shut my eyes, and clutch on to a branch to keep myself from being buried under it. And then I heard a tragic whimper.

Turning round, I saw the small white dog, shaking himself out of the mass—and such a dingy-dirty object his _passé_ white coat looked against the snow! I had left him indoors, a melancholy little figure, very sorry for himself, by reason of a swelled face. He will persist in lying with his nose to the bottom crack of the back door, irrespective of wind or weather, ever hopeful that a hare or a fox may come trailing by; and then—oh joy! what a turmoil there is within (he quite fancies he is “baying”), and what a scurrying of fur and feet without!