Annie was her love and joy. For Annie she would
do anything, even so far as to try to smile, when
the little maid laughed and danced to her. And
in truth I know not how it was, but every one was taken
with Annie at the very first time of seeing her.
She had such pretty ways and manners, and such a look
of kindness, and a sweet soft light in her long blue
eyes full of trustful gladness. Everybody who
looked at her seemed to grow the better for it, because
she knew no evil. And then the turn she had for
cooking, you never would have expected it; and how
it was her richest mirth to see that she had pleased
you. I have been out on the world a vast deal
as you will own hereafter, and yet have I never seen
Annie’s equal for making a weary man comfortable.
HARD IT IS TO CLIMB
[Illustration: 051.jpg Illustrated Capital]
So many a winter night went by in a hopeful and pleasant
manner, with the hissing of the bright round bullets,
cast into the water, and the spluttering of the great
red apples which Annie was roasting for me. We
always managed our evening’s work in the chimney
of the back-kitchen, where there was room to set chairs
and table, in spite of the fire burning. On the
right-hand side was a mighty oven, where Betty threatened
to bake us; and on the left, long sides of bacon, made
of favoured pigs, and growing very brown and comely.
Annie knew the names of all, and ran up through the
wood-smoke, every now and then, when a gentle memory
moved her, and asked them how they were getting on,
and when they would like to be eaten. Then she
came back with foolish tears, at thinking of that
necessity; and I, being soft in a different way, would
make up my mind against bacon.
But, Lord bless you! it was no good. Whenever
it came to breakfast-time, after three hours upon
the moors, I regularly forgot the pigs, but paid good
heed to the rashers. For ours is a hungry county,
if such there be in England; a place, I mean, where
men must eat, and are quick to discharge the duty.
The air of the moors is so shrewd and wholesome, stirring
a man’s recollection of the good things which
have betided him, and whetting his hope of something
still better in the future, that by the time he sits
down to a cloth, his heart and stomach are tuned too
well to say “nay” to one another.
Almost everybody knows, in our part of the world at
least, how pleasant and soft the fall of the land
is round about Plover’s Barrows farm. All
above it is strong dark mountain, spread with heath,
and desolate, but near our house the valleys cove,
and open warmth and shelter. Here are trees,
and bright green grass, and orchards full of contentment,
and a man may scarce espy the brook, although he hears
it everywhere. And indeed a stout good piece
of it comes through our farm-yard, and swells sometimes
to a rush of waves, when the clouds are on the hill-tops.
But all below, where the valley bends, and the Lynn
stream comes along with it, pretty meadows slope their
breast, and the sun spreads on the water. And
nearly all of this is ours, till you come to Nicholas
Snowe’s land.
