The few acres about the cottage belonged to Daniel, and furnished him with occupation. Her household work, the dairy, poultry, and pigs found enough for his wife to do. Too much when there was a baby as well. But Barbara managed. She never dreamed of employing a servant, and she was so habitually careful and orderly, that both work and expenditure were reduced to the lowest possible amount.
The two first children, both boys, died just when the toils of nursing were over, and each could patter unassisted over the red-tiled house-floor.
It was a very silent place after that. Barbara grieved, and worked more mechanically, and Daniel mourned after his fashion, thinking to himself that there was to be no son to follow father and grandfather in the old rut.
Yet the expenditure was not increased. Every apple in the orchard, every cabbage in the garden, every scrap of produce that could be turned into a penny or the half of one, was so turned to account. Slowly and surely the money kept growing, for the little holding furnished nearly all that the pair required, and clothes seemed, in Barbara's careful hands, to grow little the worse for wear.
Daniel's hoards grew—Mr. Mitcheson, the chief lawyer at Claybury, could have told how fast; for though Barbara did not know it, her husband was adding field to field, and rents and interest were being turned into principal, and let out on safe mortgages to increase the income that was never to be spent, but to go on increasing still.
Daniel liked Mr. Mitcheson, chiefly because he kept in the same rut as his father and grandfather had followed before him. It was as natural for a Mitcheson to be the chief lawyer at Claybury, as for Daniel Walthew to plough, sow, and reap the fields that his forefathers had first earned, then owned.
Daniel was forty-one and Barbara twenty-eight when their second child died. Five years later a third child was given them, and the gift remained. That he had all the affection of which his father was capable may well be imagined. In the depths of her heart, his mother longed to do more and better for her boy, to make his young life brighter and more childlike. But she had been trained to keep in one rut, and felt that there was no stepping out of it. She had no will but that of her husband, and she must teach little Mark to keep within the same bounds.
The child was not stinted in one way. He was fed with food convenient for him; his clothing was good and comfortable, and shaped to promote freedom of limb and preserve health, by the careful hands of his mother. She watched him, worked for him, nursed him, as no hireling could have done; though, thank God! There are many nurses not mothers who look for their reward less in pounds, shillings, and pence than in the well-being of the little ones committed to their charge.
But though little Mark's bodily wants were well supplied, his young heart hungered for young companionship, and no small feet except his own ever crossed the red-tiled floor. Father could not be troubled with other people's children; they would be noisy, and sometimes need asking to a meal. Mother had trained her own little man to the tidiest, cleanest ways imaginable. She rubbed and scraped his boot soles till his feet glowed again, and his tread left no mark of mud on step or ruddy floor. Mrs. Walthew had no time to look after other people's children, so, though a little schoolfellow might come with Mark as far as the gate, he came no further. Father and mother knew at what time to expect the boy, and, in their cut-to-pattern fashion, rejoiced at his coming.
But if he were later than usual, the time had to be accounted for, and he was ever admonished to come straight home, and not loiter or play on the road.