“A short sight is a real affliction—poor fellow! It is to be hoped that he has ‘dropped’ nothing valuable. I will take the bowl and ‘caps’ into the kitchen when I have laid you down upon the lounge. Your poor back must ache by this time.”
She lingered a few minutes in the kitchen to make sure that everything was in train for dinner. Her practical knowledge of all departments of housewifery had already gained for her Mary Ann’s profound respect. The cook recommended by Mrs. Gilchrist was a tidy body, a capital worker, and, as she vaunted herself, “one as took an intrust in any family she lived in.”
“I ast that pore innocent feller if there was any parsley in the gairdin,” she chuckled to Hetty, “an’ he said he’d fetch me a bunch to gairnish me dishes. But I’ve niver laid eyes onto him since. I mistrust he don’t know one yarb from another. Is he ‘all there,’ d’ye think, mem?”
“He is not quick, but he is not an idiot, by any means,” returned his patroness. “He is a faithful, honest fellow, always thankful for a kind word, very industrious, and perfectly truthful. We think a great deal of Homer. I saw him in the garden just now, looking for the parsley. I will find him and send him in with it. Don’t sugar the berries; we do that on the table. Keep them in a cool place until they are wanted for dessert.”
She strolled down the garden walk, singing low to herself the catching tune to which she had set the words the Gilchrists had overheard the Sunday night of their first call:
O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts whose only speech is song.
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free?
Homer had vanished from the main alley that led directly to the orchard, yet she walked on down the whole length of it. Blazing tulips had supplanted faded hyacinths; the faint green globes of snowball bushes were bleaching hourly in May sunshine and breeze; the lilac hedge, lining the post-and-board fence at the bottom of the parsonage lot, was set thick with purple and mauve and white spikes.