Chapter I: January (2)

For Smokey paced up and down my room; her eyes shone like topazes in the sunlight, and as she walked, she lashed her tail like a lioness at the Zoo.

"She'd kill poor Bill if she could get him," I said.

"Yes," answered Bess, "and eat him up, without pepper and salt. Cats are never really kind, not right through, for all their purring."

Then Bess asked me what I meant to do, now that I was well again. "Papa," she said, "told me that I might go sledging some day; but this morning you must take me and show me where St. Milburgha was buried, and tell me also about the old monks. Do you know, mama, I often think of the monks in bed. Last night--I don't remember all, but there was something that happened with a man in a black gown, and Hals did something as a swan--I rather disremember," continued my little maid, with _naïveté_, "for I fell asleep before I could rightly recollect. But Burbidge perhaps will tell me; he knows a lot about monks. It is fine, as Nana says, to be such a scholard."

"Ah! now I remember," said Bess, after a pause. "Burbidge declares that they walled up Christians, the monks, and drank out of golden cups, and hunted the deer."

I was amused at Burbidge's views--they were obviously those of the very primitive Protestant.

"Come into the garden this morning, child, and I will tell you a little about the monks."

A few hours later I called "Bess!" from the gravel below. "Are you ready?" Then I heard a buzz of excited voices from the nursery, and a great fight, going on over the winding round of a comforter, and Bess leapt down two stairs at a time and joined me in the garden.

[Sidenote: A WALK IN THE CLOISTERS]

I had my snowshoes on, so I had no sense of cold, and round my shoulders heavy furs. Mouse sported before us rather like a benevolent luggage train, whilst the two terriers, Tramp and Tartar, cut capers, barked, and sniffed and frisked. These hunted in the bushes, darted in and out, and sought for rabbits under every stone and tree. They yelped and put their noses frantically into holes and corners. Whether the rabbits were real or imaginary it was impossible to say.

Bright sunshine fell upon the old red sandstone of which the later part of the old Abbey Farmery is built, and cast an opalescent glare on the snow-covered roof. The old yew hedges stood forth like banks of verdant statuary, in places where the snow had melted, and on the top of a stone ball stood the blue-necked peacock.

The day was deliciously crisp, clear, and invigorating, and Bess, as she ran along, laughed and snowballed me and the dogs, and so we wandered away into the cloisters.

"Tell me about it all," said Bess at last, confidentially, after a time of breathless frolicking with the dogs. "Miss Weldon talks so much that I can never understand her."

Then I told Bess in a few simple words about the cloisters. "There was, first of all, dear," I said, "a party of Saxon ladies who lived at the abbey, and the most beautiful was Milburgha, their abbess. She came here to avoid a wicked Welsh prince, and she rode a beautiful milk-white steed. And she was very holy."

"I should be holy, if I rode a milk-white steed," said Bess, impulsively, "I am sure I should."

And then I added rather irrelevantly, "St. Milburgha kept geese."

"Saints and princesses always do," answered Bess, authoritatively. "I know what they did, they combed their hair with golden combs, and talked to emperors in back gardens. Then they always had flocks of goats or geese. I don't think they could get on without that, mama," said my little maid, with a gasp. "It must be very amusing," she continued, "to be a saint or a princess and have a crown. They have them in Bible picture-books. Anyway, they never have any lessons or governesses, hardly mamas, and they only talk to the animals."

"But, my little girl," I urged, "saints have to be _very_ good; and then you must remember, Bess, that princesses in all the stories have to accomplish terrible tasks, and saints to endure terrible pains."

"Worse," asked Bess, "than taking horrible, nasty, filthy medicines, worse than going to have teeth taken out by the dentist?"

"Worse than that," I answered.

[Sidenote: THE CROWN OF MARTYRDOM]

"Then I think I'll wait a little," replied Bess, with composure, "before I change; for I should not like a crown after losing my teeth, or worse, or even jam-rolly, if I had to take tumblers of horrid physic first. And I have heard Burbidge say that, 'them as wins a crown must walk on hot ploughshares first.' Still," she added, "I should sometimes like to be good."

"How about doing disagreeable things, Bess? For I fear, at first, that is what has to be done."

"Well, mama," answered Bess, "not too good; not good enough to die, but just good enough to get a little more money for good marks than I have ever got before."

And I saw by Bess's saucy smile that the day was a long, long way off when she would ever be what she calls very, very good, _i.e._--

Never dirty her hands;
Never ruffle her hair; and
Never answer back those in authority.

For a moment we ceased talking, and looked at the old carved stone basin in which the successors of Roger de Montgomery's Clugniac monks bathed in the twelfth century. On the broken shaft which supported the basin are three carved panels; one represents the miraculous draught of fishes and the other two St. Paul and St. Peter.

Bess shook her head and repeated sadly, "Of course I should like to be a saint, but there must not be too much pain. It isn't fair of God to want _too much_."

Then we wandered round to the east side of the old house, and I looked up and pointed out to Bess the old stone gargoyles. And Bess looked too.

"Those," she said, "are Christian devils. Nana says we never could get on here without a Devil, and the monks had theirs too."

There are many times in life, I find, when it is wiser not to answer a child, and this was just one. Strong light often dazzles, and, after all, are we not all children groping in the dark?

We peeped into the kitchen from outside, and saw the coppers glimmering like red gold on the shelves of the old oak dresser. Auguste, the cook, was chopping some meat, and the blows he gave resounded merrily through the crisp frosty air. I called through the mullion window and asked if the little soiled suit of yesterday was dry, as Fred the groom was to ride over to Hawkmoor and take it there in the afternoon.

"Oui, madame la comtesse," cried Auguste, for by that title he always addressed me; not that I have a title, but that Auguste thinks it kind and polite so to address me. Besides, he has a confused belief that every English woman has a title of some kind, and that its exact nature is immaterial. As he spoke he opened the little oak door that communicates with the garden and exclaimed joyously--

[Sidenote: AUGUSTE'S SECRET]

"Voyez, madame, le jeune comte will still be a joli garçon in it. See, he will still rejoice the heart of his father and mother in grenat foncé." So saying good-natured Auguste passed into the garden displaying in his arms the red suit. A miracle seemed to have been performed. There it was, spotless and dry, and as good as it was when made by Messrs. Tags and Buttons of New Bond Street. Auguste laughed and talked excitedly, gesticulated wildly, and assured me that he had saved the costume by un secret--mais un secret suprême known alone to him and to his family. "See, madame," he cried superbly, "le bon Dieu ne pourrait pas mieux faire." Then he told me in confidence that it was not in vain that his mother had been over thirty years gouvernante in the household of Madame la Princesse de P----. She knew everything, he asserted, "mais tous les secrets de ménage."

I bowed my head, and happily had the tact not to press for an explanation, for I knew Auguste's recipes were real secrets, and as jealously guarded as those of any War Office in Europe.

Bess clapped her hands. "Hals will be pleased," she said. "Because now old Fräulein need not be cross, and there will be no punishments."

Auguste bowed solemnly. "Madame is satisfied," he said, and retired like a beneficent fairy god-mother into the depth of his culinary kingdom.

The difference between our people and the Latin races is great. I have often noticed that Frenchmen or Italians are delighted to know any housewifely trick or wile--and that ignorance of all other departments but their own does not, in their eyes, constitute intrinsic merit. Foreigners seldom say, "That was not my business, sir," or "not my department." Whereas, in every well-constituted English domestic mind, "not my business," or "not my work" is a creed to be cherished firmly, whatever else dissolves or changes, and is treated as the bulwark of English domestic life.

Before I left the kitchen door I asked for a saucer of chopped egg, a slice of sponge cake, a roast potato, and half an apple for the inhabitants of my aviary. Tramp and Tartar started barking furiously, in a noisy inconsequent way; and off Bess and I went armed with dainties. Mouse followed gravely, but not without misgivings, for she took no interest in birds, and felt, I am sure, that they enjoyed far too much consideration from me. Bess and I descended the steps which led down from the garden to the field, but held on tightly to the rails, for it was slippery.

"Mummie," cried out Bess, "mind, for it is slippery all over, like walking over a glass door." However, we neither of us fell, and reached the aviary door in safety. Then we saw rather a wonderful sight: some forty canaries of all colours--green, cinnamon, jonquil, clear and mealy, yellow, spotted and flaked, were all to be found there. Poor little dears! They were making the most of the wintry gleams of sunshine, and some of them looked rather hunched up and puffy from the cold. They have a thatched shed, and in front, facing due south, a long flight of some twenty feet for exercise, beneath fine wire netting. But their playground was cold, as Bess said. As we entered the cage, they flew round us with cries of joy. Canaries are very easily tamed, and they perched on the saucer containing the food. They ate greedily the chopped egg, and pecked at the sponge cake and apple. Bess ran into their "bedroom" as she calls it, and squeezed on "their dressing table" the "heart" of a big potato cooked "in his jacket." One cock was singing sweetly. Burbidge must have given them water only a few minutes before, for it was still tepid in the dish, and some were drinking with avidity. We dropped a few drops of sherry into the water to act as a cordial, from a flask that Burbidge had got stowed away in a little box of what he calls "extras," and I added a couple of rusty nails from the same store. I noted that my dear old cock canary, "Bourton Boy," that I have had some ten years and known from an egg, looked a little mopish--what Bess calls "fat and fluffy." I watched him in silence, and tried to discover what it was he lacked. There was an ample supply of egg, apple, and of potato, not to speak of canary, rape, and hemp seed, but he fluttered round and at last pecked violently at a crystal button on my coat; then I knew what he was after, and called out "sugar." Bess echoed the cry, and darted off like a little fairy for some, finely pounded, in a scrap of paper from kind Auguste, who adores "toutes les bêtes de madame." We had discovered rightly what it was that the Bourton Boy was in need of. He uttered a note of joy, and fell upon the sugar with a right good will directly we had placed it in the cage, whilst Bess watched him.

[Sidenote: BOURTON BOY'S REQUEST]

"Why don't you give him lettuce, too? Auguste offered me some salad," she asked.

"It is not good for canaries till the spring," I replied. Then I went to the end of the shed to see if there was plenty of fat bacon hanging up--the birds' cod liver oil, as old Nana calls it. I inspected a piece some three inches long and two wide. It was pecked all over by voracious little beaks, and was quite thin in places. Fat bacon is an excellent adjunct to an aviary, and is one of the best means of keeping birds in health, and of special value to hens during the nesting season. In winter, also, it seems to be very nourishing, and to give great gloss and lustre to their plumage. After seeing that their larder was well supplied, I turned to their baking-tin, full of red sand and very fine oyster grit. It is really astonishing, what an amount of grit all birds require to keep them in health. I poked up the contents of the tin with my walking-stick. It was amusing to watch the birds. In a moment all had left the seed, egg, or potato, and were engaged in picking up the freshly turned sand. A few months ago I was obliged to have the floor of the aviary firmly cemented down, as otherwise I found that mice burrowed from underneath and effected an entrance, and then attacked my pets. The cement in a few days hardened, and now is like a rock, and I am glad to say inroads from the furry little barbarians have become impossible.

"My children of light," as I call them, having been visited, I turned away and escaped with Bess out of the aviary, but not without great care, and having resource to some stratagems, for my little feathered friends all followed me closely, curious, and always hoping for fresh delights. At a given signal, Bess slipped under my arm, and we closed the door like lightning behind us.

As we mounted the stairs, we saw the old gardener Burbidge waiting for us at the top. He looked like a picture of Old Time, with his grey hair, his worn brown overcoat, his long grey beard, and behind all, the background of snow.

"They are all well," I called out to him, "in spite of the cold."

"They was matted up yesterday," answered the old man, pointing downwards to my pets. Then he went on to say how he and the gardeners strengthened the artificial hedge on the east side, by adding fir branches and some mats, "for it was fit to blow their feathers out, that mortal sharp was the eastwinder;" and Burbidge looked at my pets with indulgent pity, and added, "They be nesh folks, be canaries, for all they write about them." Then he suspected Bess of giving them forbidden food. "They mustn't have no green food. It be as bad for 'em as spring showers be for sucking gulleys" (goslings), he added, "and that be certain death."

"But I haven't given them anything not allowed," stammered out Bess, indignantly; "mama and I have only given them what we always do."

"Ah!" said Burbidge, softening, "that won't be no hurt then; and as to potato and apple, they be the best quill revivers out, come winter. But what sort of apple was it?"

I replied that the apple was a "Blenheim Orange" and no American.

[Sidenote: "NO NEED OF FOREIGN STUFF"]

"No need of foreign stuff in Shropshire," answered Burbidge, proudly. "Our late apples are as sound as if they were only fruited yesterday."

Then I told him that the potato was one of the same sort that I had last night at dinner--floury, sweet and mealy.

"Then I'll be bound," he replied, "you had an Up-to-Dater, or may be a Sutton's Abundance; they be both sound as a sovereign, real gold all through. No blotches or specks in they. We had four roods of both on the farm. Fresh land, no manure and a dusty summer, and tatters will take care of theirselves; but come a wet year, a field potato is worth two in a garden, although I says it as shouldn't, but truth is truth, although you have to look up a black chimney to find it, as folks say."

Then old Burbidge went on to tell me how "Potatoes be right house wenches in a garden, or same as clouts to floors; but don't you go to takin' 'em from their nature too early, for when the tops bleed the tubers will never be fit for squire's food, only fit for a petty tradesman's table," and this with Burbidge is always a dark, and outer land of disgrace.

Bess, Burbidge and I paced along the neat swept paths. At last I got my word in. "No damage done by the snow?" I asked.

"I don't allow no damage," was our old retainer's stern reply; "leastways, not after daylight. I and lads were out again with poles this morning."

We wandered round the close-clipped yews, and peeped over into the borders beyond, while Burbidge talked of "how all had been put to bed" with pride. "Them as wants next year must mind this," he exclaimed.

All my tea-roses, Chinese peonies, and tender plants had been duly covered up with fern; and branches of spruce and Austrian fir had been carefully placed in front of my clematises Flammula, Montana, and Jackmanni, and round the posts on which my Crimson Rambler, jessamine, and vine ramped in summer.

"They are just resting comfortable," said Burbidge, complacently. "We all want sleep--plants and men--but let the plants have it suitable, same as childer in their beds."

We had come to the end of the red-walled garden, and as he said this, Burbidge opened the wrought-iron gate, and I passed down the flight of stairs which leads to the front drive.

"To-morrow we must talk about the list of flowers," I cried, before he was out of sight and hearing; "we must not forget the butter-beans, and the foreign golden lettuces."

Burbidge nodded, but not enthusiastically. He doesn't what he calls "hold to foreign things." England is his country, and, above all, Shropshire his county, but being very faithful, he is indulgent to my foibles. As Bess and I walked along the pathway, we lingered in the cloisters, and for a moment looked away at the far distance.

We saw nothing but white fields which lay glittering in the sunshine, and the spire of the parish church to the west, which shone like a lance under the clear sky.

"Some day," Bess said, "take me right away, mamsie, far away with the dogs," and she pointed to the snow-clad meadows that stretched round the old Abbey precincts. "I like fields," she added, "better than gardens to walk in, for there are no 'don'ts' there for the dogs."

[Sidenote: A RUINED HEDGE]

This remark from Bess alluded to my dislike of broken hedges, for, as Burbidge says, "A yew hedge broken, is a kingdom ruined." I remember this scathing remark was made on a terrible occasion when the great Mouse dashed through a yew hedge in hot pursuit of a very young rabbit, and indeed training down and replacing the broken limb of the yew was no slight matter. It was, in Burbidge's phraseology, "a long and break-back job, bad as sorting sheep on the Long-Mynd in a snow-storm;" for, as our old gardener expressed it, "Nature be often full of quirks, and sometimes disobliging as a maiden aunt that's got long in the tooth, and that walks snip-snappy, with an empty purse."

Ever since this mishap my great hound's sporting habits have been, therefore, somewhat restricted in the Pleasaunce. But if things have gone wrong by evil chance, and large, very large, paw-marks can be detected on the beds, Burbidge is not without his passing sarcasm. "I prefer a bullock," or "Big dogs be made for kennels," he will say. I recalled these reminiscences of spring and summer days, but felt sure, for all he said, that Burbidge would never hurt a hair of my dog's tail. Gradually the sunlight failed, and Bess and I went indoors. I found my friend Constance, of the Red House, awaiting my return.

Her eye fell on my garden catalogues. "One wants in life many good ways of using common things," she said; "a variety in fact, without the expense of change." And then Constance agreed with me that vegetables in England were often only a waste material. "Many of us," I held, "only know sodden potatoes and cabbage, or salad with an abominable, heavy cream sauce that reminds one of a furniture polish."

"Vegetables our side of the Channel," laughed Constance, "are a serious difficulty, partly on account of the cook, and partly on account of the gardener."

We agreed that the gardener would hardly ever pick them young or tender enough, and that this applies to beans, carrots, peas and artichokes. This set me thinking, and I mentioned a visit I once paid to Chartres some years ago. It was in early June, and I saw several waiters all shelling peas in the courtyard of the principal hotel. I was surprised to note that each man had three little baskets in front of him into which he threw his peas. I was astonished to see so many little baskets, and asked why all the peas could not be put into one basket. "Oh, madame," said the man in authority, "at Chartres we acknowledge three qualities of peas, and then there are the pods, for the pea-soup." In what English household would it be possible to get the same amount of trouble taken?

"The methods adopted in England are different," said Constance dryly. "As regards peas--generally the gardener leaves them till they have attained the hardness of bullets, and then the cook cooks them solely with water, and so a very good vegetable is made as nasty as it is possible to make it."

Then we both came to the conclusion that peas, "as a fine art," should be picked very young, or else they were very unwholesome, and that they should have mixed with them a little gravy, cream, or fresh butter. After this Constance asked me about my butter-beans, which, she told me, she thought excellent one day when she lunched with us last September. I told her that the variety that I grew chiefly was Wax Flageolet, and that my seed came from the foreign seedsman, Oskar Knopff, but that now all sorts of butter-beans can be got from English nurserymen, and that Messrs. Barr and Veitch have those and many other excellent sorts.

"They are also as easy to grow, Burbidge says, as the old-fashioned French kinds," I remarked, "but more juicy and mellow, although they do not look quite so nice on the table. Auguste likes to give them a few minutes longer in boiling, and invariably adds, as is the French and Italian habit, some haricot beans of last year of the old scarlet runner sort boiled quite soft." Then I praised the foreign habit of serving all vegetables in cream, oil, or a little gravy, and added it is setting the vegetable picture in a good frame. Then from beans we turned to potatoes, and we discussed the best kinds to grow in a moderate-sized garden.

From vegetables we wandered off to embroidery.

[Sidenote: A "WROUGHT SHEET" PLANNED]

"I want," Constance told me, "to design a quilt for a big 'four-poster.' What they would in the seventeenth century have called a 'great wrought sheet.' I am thinking of doing," she said, "a great border of old-world flowers all round my 'bed-spread,' as it is now called in the art shops."

"What more enchanting," I cried enthusiastically, and recalled to her mind the beautiful woodcuts that illustrate "Gerard's Herbal." "There are there, all the flowers and herbs," I said, "that you could possibly wish for, and they are all exquisitely drawn and well adapted for such a purpose. The Great Holland, the single Velvet, the Cinnamon, the Provence and the Damask roses, the very names are full of poetry; then of wild flowers, you must think of the Wolfe's Bane, the Mede Safron, Ladies' Smock, and Golden Mousear. In the garden, there is the Guinny Hen, and, above all, the gilly-flowers of sorts, and May pinks; and round you might work scrolls of words from poets and philosophers about the joys of sleep." Then we talked the matter over, and I got quite keen about the colour of the background, and suggested a particular tint of jonquil canary. But Constance would not hear of this, declared she preferred white, and meant to use the hand-made "homespun," as Shropshire folks call the sheets of the country that were made formerly at Westwood and round Wenlock up to the second half of the last century. "I bought," she told me, "several old pairs of large hand-made linen sheets at a sale two years ago, and I feel sure they will be delightful to work on. They are not unlike the Langdale linen, only not so fine." Then Constance went on to say how, in the eighteenth century, every farmhouse in Shropshire had its spinning wheels, and every cottager her love spinning, when her neighbours would come and spin with her out of love and good-fellowship. Besides the good wife's spinning, many a maiden's wedding garments were thus made for her by her own playmates, while it was with her own hands that the lass's wedding sheets were always spun.

Was it a better world, I have often asked myself, when women loved their spinning-wheels and tambour-frames?

Anyway it was a simpler world we both agreed, and probably a more contented one, for all ladies then took delight in superintending, and in the perfection of household work; and the world, high and low, did not commonly feel wasted as it so often does now; and our tongues ran on, on the servant problem.

[Sidenote: THE SERVANT PROBLEM DISCUSSED]

"A little more education," argued Constance, "and perhaps the world will move more smoothly. If all the girls could play a tune or two and knew a little more French, the world would not be so proud of one-finger melodies, or isolated syllables of Gallic, that we can vouch are incomprehensible to the native understanding. 'Tis not to be expected, as old Betty in the Dingle says, 'as the sun can find all the crannies at once.' Education is slow because gentility is great, and real love or desire for knowledge rare. What we want is not, as Montaigne said, 'more education, but better education.'"

Then we wandered on to what is knowledge and what are the things worth knowing, and no doubt the hour till tea would have passed all too quickly, if we had not been interrupted by Bess, who dashed downstairs breathless, and bubbling over with excitement.

"A letter," she cried, "and a letter all for me. Nana," she explained, "said I must not say 'yes' without your leave. But why should papa only have dogs as a matter of course? Here is the note."

I took the little crumpled paper from Bess's hands. It was from Maimie Armstrong and written to Bess by a friend's little girl. I read that "there are several little pups. Mamma," continued Maimie, "says you are to have one when it is old enough to leave old Nick-nack. They are all blind now and cannot see, but suck all day. One shall be sent in a basket.

"P.S.--I didn't write all this myself, because ink often goes wrong with me and I can't spell, but James, the footman, has done it for me." And then in a very large round child's hand. "Your loving friend, Maimie Armstrong."

I straightened out the little sheet and then looked round at Bess. She was literally trembling with excitement and she could hardly speak, but somehow she managed to gasp out, "Mama, I cannot live without a pug-pup." For the moment I believed she was speaking the truth, so I answered, "Yes, dear, we must have even a pug-pup if it is a necessity."

"Yes, yes," cried Bess, with rapture; "and then I shall be quite, quite happy ever afterwards."

"What a good thing it is to be a child," said Constance, softly. "One wants everything so badly."

At my acceding to Bess's request, Bess ran to me and hugged me rapturously, and called out to old Nana, who had just appeared at the head of the stairs, "I told you so; and the pug-pup is to live in the nursery."

Nana did not greet this news with the pleasure expected of her, and as the two mounted the stairs, I heard my old female retainer grumble something to herself. But give her time, as Bess always says, "and Nana will always come round, and find you a sweet out of some cupboard before she's done."

My old Nana keeps her chamber spotless, tells my little maid long old stories of Shropshire, and wages ceaseless war against fringes and furbelows in her nursery maid. "God made me a good servant," she always says, with austere pride. And I add reverently, "The Lord only knows the extent of her long devotion." It has weathered many storms, and has bid defiance to the blasts of misfortune, and to the frosts of adversity. Like the gnarled oak of one of her native forests, Nan has sheltered many young generations of saplings, and in her master's family have centred her interests, her pleasures: to their well-being she has given her life.

In the evening, after dinner, I went up the old stone staircase that leads to the nursery. Bess was sleeping peacefully, but she was not hugging, as is her wont, her favourite old doll "Sambo."

[Sidenote: THE PUG PRINCE]

"Her wouldn't to-night," explained Nana, "my little lamb; her thinks of nothing but the pug-pup. I holds to dolls for little ladies, but Miss Bess, she holds to dogs for herself. 'Oh, Nana,' her said, when I was bathing her, 'I could not live without dogs. God makes them into brothers for me.'

"Then I said, 'Why do you like 'em like that? 'Tis almost a sin.' She answered, 'God never makes them answer back; and then we can do with different toys.'

"Well," concluded Nan, pensively, as she took up her sewing, "my old aunt said God Almighty made caterpillars for something, and I suppose even dogs b'aint made for nought, leastways, they be pleasures to some."

I laughed, for behind me, padding up the stairs reluctantly, but faithfully, I saw through the open door my great Dane.

"I should miss Mouse dreadfully. Bess is right," I cried, "one's dog never answers back, and is loving and sympathetic at all times, in and out of season." I passed gently out of the room and went downstairs. I left the dimity-hung chamber, and as I did so I had a vision of a little bright, happy face. At seven, a pug-pup may seem almost a fairy prince, or possess all the gifts of the philosopher's stone. "Oh, happy childhood," I said, "which asks so little and wants it so badly."

Great logs of wood blazed gaily on the great open hearth of the chapel hall, between delicate bronze Italian dogs. The moon was shining down from a sky of placid splendour, and the little oratory looked in the evening light wonderful, and mystic. Through the old irregular lattice windows I felt as if a message of peace was being brought to me. No sound of bird or cry of beast greeted my ears. A copy of Thomas à Kempis' immortal book lay near me on the table. I took it up and read.

"In the Cross is Salvation, in the Cross is life. In the Cross is the perfection of sanctity." I read the beautiful words over, and over again. How exquisite the language is. What hope and radiance beam through every syllable. "Yes," I said, in the stillness of this wonderful place, "I too can hear His message, for this once also was a holy and austere place, where men poured out their lives in the ecstasies of prayer." Then I thought of the monk of St. Agnes as I saw him in imagination across the long centuries, denying himself all that makes life sweet, and welcome to most men, and devoting himself heart and soul to holy meditation, and still holier penmanship. Idleness he abhorred; labour, as he said, was his companion, silence his friend, prayer his auxiliary. There seemed almost an overpowering sense of holiness in the serene calm of the Abbey, and I strove against it as if the air were unduly burdened with an incense too strong to bear. I rose and went to the door and let in the night air. I saw the dim outline of the trees and the dimmer outline of garden-bed and bush. As I looked, in strange contrast, the glory of the summer days returned to me. In the cold of January my mind floated back to the joy of faintly budding woods, to deep red roses, to the rich perfume of bee-haunted limes, and to pure lines of blossoming lilies. All these I saw in my soul as I stood and gazed into the chill darkness. The flowers seemed to laugh at me, and were accompanied by fair visions of Joy, Love, and Life; but grim forlorn winter, the symbol of the lonely soul in the mountain heights, has also its own beauties. I looked round again, and the mystic sides of Renunciation held me fast. The peace and devotion of the past seemed to hold and chain me with irresistible force. I shut the door and stood again in the place where saints had stood.

[Sidenote: THE HOLY PLACE]

Beside me was the great stone altar with its seven holy crosses, before which kneeling kings had received the sacrament, and where saint and sinner had received alike absolution. Outside alone the stars were witnesses of my presence. They shone as they had shone a thousand years ago, as they will shine a thousand years to come. Pale, mystic, and eternal, a holy dew of wonder seemed to fall upon my shoulders, the Peace of God is not of this world, nor can it be culled from the joys of life.

It is the Christian's revelation of glory, but those that serve can hear at times the still calm voice of benediction in such silent places as this, or in the supreme moment of duty, "for in the cross is the invincible sanctuary of the humble, in the cross of Christ is the key of Paradise."

The next morning I rose early. There was much to do, for life can be as busy in the country as in town. I wrote my letters, and according to my constant custom--much laughed at, be it said, by many friends--jotted down my engagements, duties, and pleasurable excitements for the day. There were--

Some blankets to send to the poor. My list of flower seeds. And then Bess and I were to go sledging in the lanes.

To English people sledging never seems a quite real amusement, and always to belong a little to the region of a fairy-story.

Punctual to the moment, Burbidge appeared with long sheets of foolscap, and we made out the list of seeds.

"Burbidge," I said grandly, as he handed to me the sheets of paper, "I leave the vegetables to you, save just my foreign pets."

Burbidge bowed graciously and we were about to begin, when he could not resist his usual speech about disliking foreign men, foreign flowers, and foreign seeds.

"Yes," I rejoined slyly; "but you must remember how many people liked the Mont D'Or beans and praised your Berlin lettuces."

"Well, so long as you and the squire were pleased, I know my duty," replied Burbidge, mollified.

"Which is?" I could not refrain from asking, for the old man has always his old-fashioned formula at the tip of his tongue.

"Which is," repeated old Burbidge, rehearsing his old-fashioned catechism solemnly, "watering in droughts, weeding all weathers, and keeping a garden throughout peart and bobbish as if it war the Lord's parlour."

"It is a very good duty," I said.

"Yes," answered Burbidge, complacently; "new fangled scholards haven't got far beyond that, not even when they puts Latin names to the job. They have County Councils now, and new tricks of all sorts, but 'tis a pity as so many get up so early to misinform themselves, but there be some as allus will live underground and call it light, and there be none so ignorant as they as only reads books. They be born bats for all the garnish of their words."

After which there followed a long pause--then Burbidge handed me his list of vegetables.

"I haven't forgotten the foreigneerers," he said indulgently, "carrots, potatoes, peas, onions, celery, and greens, sprouts, and curls--enough even for a kitchen man, and the Lord Almighty would have a job to know what a Froggy cannot chop up or slip into a sauce. One might stock a county with extras, if one listened to they."

[Sidenote: LOVE IN THE MIST]

Then we turned to the flower list. Burbidge pointed with a big brown finger to my entry of "Love in the Mist," as I wrote, for I proposed having great patches of it in front of my lines of Madonna lilies, varied by patches of carnations, stocks, and zinnias in turns.

"I don't hold," he said severely, "to so much bluery greenery before my lilies. There won't be no colour in my borders." Then when I protested, he added, "You like it, mam, 'cause it has a pretty name. There's a deal in a name, but 'tisn't all that call it 'Love in the Mist.' 'Devil in the Bush' was what my mother used to call it, and other folks 'Laddie in a Hole.' But there's a deal too much talked about such nonsense. Leave the maids alone, and eat your vittals, is what I tell my boys, and then there'd be a lot of cakey nonsense left out of the world."

Then Burbidge, knowing my heart was, what he terms, "set on blows," bowed slowly, and vanished.

Left to myself, I looked down the catalogue of flower seeds and ordered to my heart's content; packets of shadowy Love in the Mist, and Eckford's delightful sweet peas in exquisite shades of red, mauve, lavender, rose, pink, scarlet, and pale yellow. Then I thought of the sweetness of Centaury, the brilliant yellow of the Coreopsis, the perfume of the mulberry-tinted Scabious, and the azure glory of the Convolvulus Minor. I recalled the beauty of the godetias and the opal splendour of the larkspurs, while the gorgeous shades of the Malopes seemed to make an imaginary background of magnificence in my borders, and in my mind's eye the diaphanous beauty of the Shirley poppies seemed to add to the gorgeous sunlight of even sovereign summer itself. And lastly, as the latest annuals of the year, I did not forget to add some single moon-faced sunflowers, such as I once saw at Linley in the old garden there--worn, white, shadowy creatures with the tears of autumn in their veins.

It is a great delight to order your own flower list. It means a true wealth of beauty in the future, brilliant colours and sweet odours, and the promise of so much in the present. Promise is often like the petals of last year's roses, and yet full of delights is the garden of imagination. I sat on and dreamt of my future borders, in which no frost nor hail, nor any evil thing would fall, and sat on drawing little squares and rounds on white paper borders when my leisure was suddenly disturbed. Too much leisure is not given to any mother of the twentieth century. And Bess entered like a thunder clap.

"Mama," she called, "Mama, Crawley declares that you are going out sledging. May I come--I want to, I want to?"

"Yes," I answered; "but you must do just as I tell you, get out if I tell you, and not do anything foolish."

Bess agreed to all my stipulations. What would she not have agreed to, to gain her point? And conditions, before they happen, do not sit heavily on a child's soul.

At last even luncheon was over, and Bess awaited the sledge, expectant and triumphant on the mounting-block.

Just as Bess was sure for the hundredth time that it must be almost tea time, and that something must have happened to Bluebell, the sound of the bells rang out across the frosty air.

"It comes, it comes," cried Bess, rapturously, "and oh, mama, isn't it fun. It's better than walnuts on Sundays, or damming up a stream with Burbidge, or even helping to wash Mouse with Fred," and my little maid, in a flame-coloured serge mantle trimmed with grey Chinchilla fur, leapt about with excitement.

[Sidenote: WE JOURNEY IN A SLEDGE]

A minute later, and Fremantle and the footman ran out with blankets, which they carried in their arms in great brown-paper parcels. Each parcel bore the name of one of the seven old women who were that afternoon to receive a pair of blankets. We got in, and then somehow all the parcels were piled up and round us--how I cannot really say, but like a conjuring trick somehow it was done. At last, when all was put in and Bess screamed out "safe," I shook the reins, old Bluebell looked round demurely, and then trotted off. Mouse gave a deep bay of exultation, Tramp and Tartar yelped frantically, and away we went.

The dogs barked, the bells jingled, and a keen, crisp wind played upon us, packages and pony.

We drove along the old town. We passed the old Town Hall with its whipping-post, and so up High Street past the beautiful old house known as Ashfield Hall, once the old town house of the Lawleys, where Charles I. is said to have slept during his wars, and where Prince Rupert another time dined and rested with some of the gentlemen of his guard. Ashfield Hall is a striking old house, with a gateway, mullion and latticed windows, and beyond extends the old street, known since the days of the pilgrims as Hospital Street.

Overhead stretched a laughing blue sky, and all round was what Bess was pleased to term the Snow Queen's Kingdom. First of all, we went to Newtown. We passed the red vicarage with its great dark green ilex, and then up by the picturesque forge, where the blacksmith was hammering on a shoe, away by the strange old cottages on the Causeway, with a fall below them into the road of some seven or eight feet, on we went as quickly as fat Bluebell could be persuaded to trot. Then we mounted the hill, and I got out and led the old pony to ease its burden, for a sledge is always a heavy weight when it has to be dragged up hill. At last old Jenny James's cottage was reached, and her parcel duly handed out.

"I like giving things," said Bess, superbly. "It seems to make you happier."

"Yes," I answered; "but gifts are best when we give something that we want ourselves."

"Don't you want the blankets, mama?" asked Bess, abruptly.

"Well, not exactly, dear," I answered. "Giving them didn't mean that I had to go without my dinner, or even had to give up ordering my seed list this morning."

"Must one really do that," asked Bess sadly, "before one can give anything?"

"Perhaps, little one," I said, "to taste the very best happiness." Then there was a little pause, which was at last broken by Bess turning crimson and saying--

"Mamsie, I think it must be very, very difficult to be quite, quite happy."

[Sidenote: GIFTS TO THE POOR]

I did not explain, but saw from Bess's expression that I had sown a grain of a seed, and wondered when it would blossom. Then we turned round and slipped down the hill at a brisk rattle, all the dogs following hotly behind, to an old dame who had long had a promise of a blanket. The old body came out joyfully and stood by her wicket gate, beaming with pleasure. It is an awful thing, sometimes, the joy of the poor over some little gift. It brings home to us at times our own unworthiness more than anything else.

Old Sukey, as she is called by her neighbours, took her blankets from Bess with delight. "I shall sleep now," she said, "like a cat by the hearth, come summer come winter," and her old wrinkled face began to twitch, and tears to rise in her poor old rheumy eyes. "Pretty dear," she said to Bess, "'tis most like a blow itself. I wish I had a bloom to offer, but 'tis only a blessing now that I can give thee."

Again we turned, and pattered back post-haste up the Barrow Road to a distant cottage.

"Is it a good thing to get a blessing?" asked Bess, suddenly.

"A very good thing, for it makes even the richest richer."

"Then," answered Bess, "when I grow up I mean to get a great many blessings."

"How, little one, will you do that?"

"Why," answered Bess, "I shall give to everybody everything they want, and buy for all the children all the toys that I can find."

"But supposing that you are not rich, that you haven't money in your purse, or a cheque-book from the bank like papa?"

"Then I shall have to pray--and that will do it, for I'm sure the good Lord wouldn't like to disoblige me."

At last all our visits were paid, and we had left seven happy old souls, whom it was a comfort to think would all sleep the sounder for our visit of that day.

As we drove home, Bess suddenly turned round and said--

"Mamsie, why can't they buy blankets?"

It is very hard for the child-mind to grasp that the necessities of life--bread, blankets, and beds--do not come, in a child's language, "all by themselves."

Puppies, pets, and chocolates, children can understand have to be paid for; but the dull things, they consider, surely ought to grow quite naturally, like the trees outside the nursery windows, all by themselves, and of their own accord, as they would say.

I tried to explain to Bess what poverty really was, and told her what it would mean to have no money, but to buy the absolute bare necessities of life. Bess listened open-mouthed, and at the end exclaimed--

"Why has God given me so much, and to poor children, then, so little?"

"I wonder," I replied; "but, anyway, as you have got so much, you must do what you can to make other little boys and girls happier. For God, when he gives much, will also ask much some day."

Bess did not answer, and we drove back in silence. It was very still along the country lanes, save for the tinkling of the joyous bells. Behind us followed our pack, Mouse panting somewhat, for she had fed at luncheon time, not wisely, but too well; but Tramp and Tartar scampered gaily after us. The whole country seemed enveloped in a white winding-sheet, and the sunlight was dying out of the west. A soft white mist was stealing up over all, but the voice of death was gentle, calm, almost sweet, across the silent world. Cottages looked out by their windows, blinking, and appeared almost as white as the snow beneath them.

Old Bluebell seemed to know that her trot to the Abbey was her last journey, and went with a good will. We passed the new hospital, dashed down Sheinton Street, and so into the Italian gates by the old Watch Tower of the abbot's, beyond the old Bull Ring where, through many centuries, bulls were baited by dogs.

[Sidenote: "I WANT TO BE HAPPY"]

As we drew up before the door, Bess exclaimed, regretfully--

"Oh, mama, why has it all stopped? I should like driving in a sledge to go on for ever and ever."

I kissed the little maid, and we went into tea. Bess hardly spoke, and I thought her wearied by the excitement of the drive, but that night, when I went up to see her in bed, she called out--

"Mamsie, mamsie, come quite close. A secret." So I sat down on the little bed, and the little arms went round my neck. "Mama, I have looked out a heap--a heap of toys--to send off to poor children. My new doll Sabrina, my blue pig, my little box of tea things, the new Noah's Ark, but Nana will not pack them up. She says they're too good for poor children. Isn't she wicked, for I want to give them all, and to be happy--happy as you mean me to be."