CHAPTER IX—MARY GUILFOYLE
The sun had come out bright after a rain, and every leaf was shining, the June day when we drove over to Ridgefield to fetch Mary Guilfoyle. We started early in the morning, but it was already like noon in that midsummer season. Daisies were powdering the fields, as white as snow, and yellow and orange hawkweeds were growing in among them, so that whole fields showed yellow, orange, and white. The orange hawkweed is very fragrant, and its sweetness mixed with the spicy bitterness of the daisies. Then, on a knoll as the road rose above the river, we found patches of bright blue lupins in the yellow and orange and white, making such a blaze of color as I have never seen before in our northern fields.
There were streaks of crimson sorrel in the fields where there were no daisies, among the ripening June-grass and red-top; all the grasses, and the fields of grain, were beginning to turn a little tawny, and quick waves chased each other across them with the light summer wind.
Mary lives in a scrap of a new house, in a thick wood of young firs and spruces. The last mile of our road led through these sweet-smelling trees, which were set all over with light green jewels of new growth. Grass grew in the ruts, and the moist earth of the wood road was thronged with yellow butterflies; and tiny “blues,” like bits of the sky come to life, fluttered among the ferns. Breath after breath of sweetness came from the warm woods in the sunshine.
Mary was waiting for us at the door, with her knitting in her hand, and her cat at her skirts. Her small rough fields across the road were ploughed and planted, and she was ready to come to us. She is a strongly built old woman with bright blue eyes and yellowish gray hair, sturdy as a weather-beaten piece of white-oak timber. Many is the time that she has left our house of an afternoon (in our impossible spring going, too, with the frost coming out of the ground and the mud a foot deep); walked out to her farm, six full miles, seen to some detail of farm-work that worried her, and walked back, arriving before seven the next morning, to cook our breakfast.
She works on her farm all summer, planting and hoeing her corn and beans and potatoes. She has help from the men of the neighborhood when she can get it, but I believe she follows the plough herself when she is put to it. In winter she comes into town, and works for households in difficulties. If the cook deserts us, or we have a sudden influx of guests or everyone has grippe, we send for Mary Guilfoyle and she sees us through. She comes into a house like a blast of clear air. Nothing ruffles her, and her mere presence seems to return its right proportions and gayety to life. She knows how to work as few people do nowadays, and she is so sound-hearted and unafraid that there is something royal and powerful about her.
Mary’s mother was French, and it is from her she gets her gestures. Her hands move finely, with a dignity and control a duchess might envy, and they say more than mere words could. And then, her funny expressions! She is a Roman Catholic, but so far from being a church-goer that I was surprised, last Easter morning, at seeing her ready for church; and my surprise was rebuked with,
