Every morning, after the fuss of getting off the family to their several avocations, she would run down the garden, and stand for a few minutes by the wall that overlooked the moor, watching great shafts of sunlight fall from a gray sky on to brown wastes of heather and bracken, listening to the call of the curlews or to the trilling autumn warble of the robin, perched on the red-berried hawthorn bush. Kind Mother Nature could always soothe her spirits, and send her back with fresh courage for the day's work. And, in the evening, when husband and children came home to fire and lamp-light, she had generally some nature notes to tell them, or some amusing little incident to make them laugh and forget their various woes and worries.
"I'm so glad, Muvvie dear, you're not a melancholy lugubrious person!" said Ingred once. "It would be so trying if you sat at the tea-table and sighed."
"Humor is the salt of life," smiled Mrs. Saxon. "We may just as well get all the fun out of the little daily happenings. Even 'the orphan' has her bright side!"
As "the orphan" was a temporary member of the Wynchcote establishment she merits a word of description. She came from an institution in the neighborhood, and, being the only servant procurable at the time, was tolerated in spite of a terrible propensity for smashing plates, and for carolling at the very pitch of a nasal voice. She was a rough, good-tempered girl, devoted to Minx, the cat, and really kind if anybody had a headache or toothache, but quite without any sense of discrimination: she would show a traveling hawker into the drawing-room, and leave the clergyman standing on the doorstep, took the best serviettes to wipe the china, scoured the silver with Monkey Brand Soap, and systematically bespattered the kitchen tablecloth with ink. Her love of music was a terrible trial to the medical student of the family on Saturday morning, when he was endeavoring to read at home.
"Carlyle says somewhere: 'Give, oh, give me a man who sings at his work!'" growled Athelstane one day, bursting forth from his den to complain of the nuisance, "but I bet the old buffer didn't write that sentiment with a maid-servant howling popular songs in the next room. According to all accounts he loathed noise and couldn't even stand the crowing of a cock. I should call that bit of eloquence just bunkum. If the orphan doesn't stop this voice-production business I shall have to go and slay her. How can a fellow study in the midst of such a racket? Where's the Mater? Down in Grovebury? I suppose that accounts for it. While the cat's away, &c."
"Hardly complimentary to compare your maternal relative to a cat!" chuckled Ingred. "Stop the orphan if you can, but you might as well try to stop the brook! She's quiet for five minutes then bursts out into song again like a chirruping cricket or a croaking corn-crake. I want to spiflicate her myself sometimes."
"'Late last night I slew my wife,
Stretched her on the parquet flooring;
I was loath to take her life,
But I had to stop her snoring!'"
quoted Hereward from Ruthless Rhymes.
"Look here!" said Quenrede, emerging from the kitchen with a half-packed lunch basket. "We three are taking sandwiches, and going for a good old tramp over the moors. Why not drop your work for once and come with us? You look as if you needed a holiday."
"I've a beast of a headache," admitted Athelstane.