The schoolmistress at Mendip had given Susan an excellent character, and Mrs. More had dictated a note to Joyce from her sick bed, telling her that she believed Susan might really prove a friend as well as a servant, for gratitude would be the spring of all her work, gratitude to Joyce for taking her, and holding her free from all blame in her father's ill-doings and bad life, which had apparently been the cause of the great sorrow which had fallen upon Fair Acres.
Mrs. Falconer had consented with the cold apathetic consent which was discouraging enough. She had taken little or no notice of Susan's presence in the kitchen and dairy till she began to come forth from her seclusion. Then, indeed, poor Susan had a hard time of it; but love, and gratitude to Joyce, were too strong for her to show any resentment for the many unjust suspicions and sharp reproofs which she had to bear.
"It's only what I must look for, Miss Joyce," she said one day, when the breaking of a plate, which she had never touched, was at once laid to her charge. "It's only what I must look for. My dear mother always used to say, when poor father beat and ill-used her, that she remembered some words of St. Peter, that if you were buffeted for doing well, that is, doing your best, and took it patiently, it was acceptable in God's sight. Besides, Miss Joyce, I have been used to hard words, and I know how brokenhearted the poor mistress is; why, she is even a bit cross to Master Piers and you, which is more than I can understand, for you are next door to an angel, Miss Joyce."
"No, Susan I don't feel at all angelic. That is a mistake. I feel angry and discontented sometimes, if I don't show it. There are so many troubles which can't be talked of."
"Yes, miss, I know that well enough; but you can tell them to God, and that's a rare comfort. Dozens of times in the day I tell Him of my biggest trouble, that I have a father who——"
Susan stopped, threw her coarse apron over her head, and ran away to scour the pans in the dairy till they shone like silver.
The bright November weather soon vanished, and the winter closed in rapidly. Except for a visit of a few days from Miss Falconer and Charlotte, nothing occurred to break the monotony of this dead time of the year. Farming and gardening operations were suspended, and Ralph got out his beloved books again, and Piers arranged and re-arranged his large collection of curiosities, and Christmas drew near.
Joyce had given up listening for a footstep on the road, or looking anxiously for the old postman, who trudged from Wells, on fine days, with the letters, but in bad weather pleased himself as to the length of his rounds.
Mrs. Falconer worked, and knitted, and darned, and, when the wind blew fiercely round the house on the dark winter nights, thought of her little Middies tossing about on the wide sea; and of Melville in that far-off land, which she knew more by its shape of a boot on the map Piers had hung up in his room, than by any distinct notion of what was to be seen there.
Rome, Florence, Naples, were but names to her, and as dim and distant as Haiphong or Hong Kong are to many in the present day.