Ellen thought there never had been a child whose laughter was more like everything good and who laughed more often than Moira....
Turning in from the Marquette road to Sterling Blaydon’s new country house, “Thornhill” as they called it, a visitor with a sculptor’s eye might describe the formation of the land as the huge thigh of a woman, resting horizontally on the earth. The private driveway ran along the crest which sloped on both sides downward to gentle valleys, while the whole ridge tapered in width gradually to a round end or knee on which rested the house in a semi-circle of green. Beyond the house lay a few hundred feet of clipped lawn and well spaced trees, and then the Titan calf plunged into the earth, its declivitous sides covered with exposed rock and a thick undergrowth of every imaginable scrub and bramble, with a plentiful scattering of dogwood and plumb and thorn. It was holy with blossoms in the Spring, beginning with the ghostly shad-bush. The edge of the hill overlooked a broad meadow fifty yards below, as flat as a lake.
Spread out in three directions from this crowning point lay Blaydon’s land, perhaps a third of it in rocky knolls and wood, and the remainder under cultivation by tenant farmers. The driveway to the site led almost due west but the axis of the house itself, which was narrow and long despite its irregularities, turned toward the south. It was built to the shingle eaves of rubble-rock and dominated at either end by two enormous chimneys of the same gorgeous, parti-coloured material, all of which had been found on the place. Broad verandahs, a wide, tiled terrace reached by French windows; a quaint Dutch Colonial door and portico facing the road; screened balconies skilfully masked by the eaves; the great living and dining rooms and library which took up almost all of the lower floor; the correspondingly spacious chambers overhead, attested its inhabitants’ means and love of comfort. The entrance lawn and slopes to the north were laid out in series of irregular, charming gardens. On the southeast the hill descended almost horizontally from the tiled and parapeted terrace near the house, so that from the living room windows one looked through the tops of trees to the Country Club on another hill less than a mile away.
With greater spaces had come more movement, more things to be interested in, more excitement and sound, all of which Ellen had welcomed. She meddled in everything. She had become a creditable sub-assistant gardener and something of a bee-keeper, having watched the professionals at work. The four dogs were her especial care. Two were morbidly shy collies called “Count” and “Countess” by Mathilda, and Ellen won the privilege of touching their magnificent coats and standing by while they fed, only after many months of gentleness and coaxing. They seldom allowed the other members of the household to come near them and ran wild in the woods. On the other hand the beagle and setter were almost annoyingly chummy. The animals in the stable had their daily histories also, which concerned her intimately. She was a splendid milker in emergencies and would have liked to keep fowls, but this Mathilda, who respected sleep in the mornings, would not permit.
Of the two boys in the house, Hal, nine and a half, was the keener-witted and the more attractive. He was already at home among the horses and rode bare-back as well as in the saddle. She often felt sorry for Rob, who was left behind much of the time by his older brother and the swift, tiny Moira, but she did not humour him as much as she did Hal.
It was Hal, however, who had ridden a cow so successfully one day that Moira pleaded to be helped up herself, and whether the beast thought her a less formidable antagonist, or was frightened by her skirts, the little girl was thrown off and severely jolted. Hal supported her into the house, himself more frightened than she, and vowed to his aunt solemnly that from that day he would never lead her into danger again, and if she got into it he would get her out. Yet she and the boy quarrelled too and sometimes went for days without speaking. Moira would take up with Rob then, scheming with all her mind to devise adventures that would make his brother envious. She often succeeded in these stratagems, until a time came when he did not concern himself with her at all, being grown beyond little girls.
The elaborate arrangements which had been made for Moira from the first, and the increasing complexity of the child’s education, which had been undertaken very early by Mrs. Seymour, made it easier for Ellen to regard her as a member of the Blaydon family. It was only when Moira misbehaved within her knowledge or in her sight, that the true mother felt it hard to play her neutral rôle. While Moira was good she was a Seymour, naturally, but when she was bad she seemed to Ellen to be wholly her own. Ellen’s impulse then, in spite of the habit of suppression, was to correct her as a mother would.
When these occasions had passed and she could reflect back on them, she thought it a blessing that Moira’s correction was in the hands of others than herself. One instance of Mrs. Seymour’s wise manner of dealing with unusual conduct filled her mind with wonder and created for her almost a new conception of life.
Aunt Mathilda was consulting with her in the kitchen when Moira burst in and cried: