"With the very greatest pleasure," I answered truthfully.
Miss E. is one of the best women that ever lived and the very best housekeeper to boot. She knows exactly how much to provide for a family of four without waste and yet abundantly, and she can arrange for a table of seventy-five with the same precision; abundance of excellent food and no waste. With such qualities it seems strange that she should have now only the position of what Chloe calls "sextant" to our little village church, and her modest remuneration of two dollars a month is all that she has in the world.
She was a woman of wealth, but, like so many others, her means all disappeared with the end of the war, and she has supported herself by sewing and taking places as housekeeper for a number of years. Now she begins to show the ravages of time and does not feel she can do all that a housekeeper should, and for the last six years has lived in Peaceville, where she had nieces who are devotedly kind to her, but she will not live with them. She lives alone in a house which belonged to her mother and where her summers were spent in her youth. It has passed into other hands, but she is allowed to stay there in the winter as the house is only rented in summer.
It is very near the church, and she is very happy and a marvel of cheerfulness and faith—no repining, no complaining. She sometimes takes in a little sewing still, but for absurdly small prices.
Miss E. is a walking chronicle of the ancestry of every one in the county, I might almost say in the low country, as the coast is called in this State, and can tell you who is who emphatically. I enjoyed having my memory refreshed on many genealogical facts, as I am very weak in that quarter. I am really devoted to this dear old lady and feel it a privilege to have her with me.
February 27.
Drove Miss E. home and then began preparing for the paying guests, who arrived at 2.
March 2.
Finished planting oats at last. I have spent every day in the field for nearly two weeks—the last few days a joy—just drinking in the delicious soft air and watching the buds which promise so much.
There is a mystery of hope over everything, the rest of the ideal, and as I sat on a cedar trunk to-day and looked out into the drowsy blue of the atmosphere I felt a sense of gratitude to the Great Maker and Giver of all this beauty—thankful for my blessings; the great blessing of space and freedom and closeness to nature—yes, and thankful for my limitations, my sorrows, my privations. Thankful that He has thought me worthy to suffer and has taught me to be strong. He is beauty and power and love illimitable and infinite.