My need of quiet for reading and rest was duly considered. The room used for teaching in was really intended for the drawing-room, but was the only apartment that could be spared for the purpose. With true wisdom, Mr. and Mrs. Barr decided on giving up their drawing-room, and instead of having a useless show apartment, gave their children a large, bright room for lessons. After seven in the evening it was my own, and no one intruded upon me without invitation. At the same time, I was free to join Mrs. Barr and the elder children in the dining-room if I chose; the pastor was always in his study then. If the little ones were restfully inclined and the mother's arms free, this evening hour was a very pleasant time.
By degrees, I coaxed Mrs. Barr into letting me help her, by representing the benefit it would be for me to learn the many lessons she was so competent to teach. Then, when her fingers were freed from the needle, she would take a book and read aloud to us.
Our party usually consisted, besides our two selves, of Mary Baxendell and Margaret Barr, though the latter generally withdrew into a separate corner, and stopping her ears, chose her own book, in preference to listening whilst her mother read. Mary Baxendell would sit on a low chair or on the rug, and take in with eager ears the word-pictures or wise lessons which came so musically from those cultured lips. I could not help sighing at times, as I thought how large a portion of Mrs. Barr's daily life was taken up with things so far beneath her, and I pictured her amidst different scenes and adorning by her gracious presence some stately home with all the appliances of wealth around her.
Was I right, I wonder, in regretting that her lot was cast where it was? Did she not there shed happiness on all around her? Were these little cares and calculations unbecoming to this true wife and mother, who had deliberately chosen to share the lot of the good man to whom she had given her heart? Her life was a thoroughly womanly life, her example a noble one, which must influence others for good. Would wealth and ease have developed such a character as Mrs. Barr's?
After asking myself all these questions, I came to the same conclusion about her that I had done about myself. The discipline must have been needed, and for some wise end, the All-wise had permitted her to occupy this particular niche, so different from that to which she had once been accustomed. For Mrs. Barr had been, like myself, brought up in a luxurious home, and had never known a care about money matters until the children increased around her, while the pastor's income remained the same and much of her own had been lost.
Each day passed at Hillstowe showed me how my choice of this sphere of work had been Divinely directed in answer to prayer. Could I be with this dear woman, so patient, industrious, uncomplaining, and so cultured, without learning in some degree to imitate the virtues I admired? If nothing had come of my being at Hillstowe beyond the fact that I derived hourly benefit from the influences around me and earned my own bread, I should have infinite cause for thankfulness to God for having sent me there.
But, in the end, the current of my whole after life was changed, through my choosing the home in preference to the hall as the scene of my labours.
Our winter evenings were not always like what I have described. Baby Flossy's teething time made her fractious, and then the mother's care was given to the most helpless. She would not have me in company with a crying child, so I was gently dismissed to my room, Mary Baxendell's mute appeal being always answered by me with an invitation to accompany me. Lilian always went early to bed from choice, and Margaret, the determined, thought it infra dig to sit in the schoolroom after hours.
She was a clever, but rather hard girl, from whom her mother had little sympathy or help. She disliked babies, openly called them little nuisances, and declined to touch one if she could help it. But she would neither go to the nursery with the twin boys and Lilian, nor to the schoolroom with me. She was the eldest daughter, and insisted on her privileges.
These meant sitting with her mother, though she might have to fill her ears with cotton, whilst she pored over a book, on account of the crying baby, and having tea and bread and butter for breakfast, whilst the rest, Mr. Barr included, took porridge and milk. Still, I had my comfort out of Margaret. She had great abilities, was an omnivorous student, did credit to her teacher, and obliged me to work hard to increase my stores of knowledge for her to draw upon.