Blanche Edith Baughan

“ Ross round the corner, a little tin pail in each hand. Look at her well, for you shall see a happy woman. Not very handsome is Catherine, with her spare figure, a little stooped, her weather-beaten, life-worn face, and hair long since gone grey. Neither is she elegant, or even picturesque, with those tucked-up skirts, that must already have been old when she brought them out from Home, that tweed cap of Peter’s on her head, and those clumping, thick boys’ boots. But Catherine Ross has things to think about far more interesting than her own outward show ”

“ But Catherine glories in her scrap of a sitting-room, with its motley collection of furniture, bought bit by bit at sales, transmogrified to meet the Sunshine needs, and upholstered by patient fingers into an effect somehow harmoniously old-fashioned, although the stuffs are new. And both of them are immensely proud of the whole dwelling—for did not Peter build it all himself? The kitchen dresser is a packing-case, and packing-cases in disguise make up most of the bedroom furniture; there is not a single cupboard in the house, and Peter has yet to put up the scullery and shed—but what of that? ”

“ Ross really must be out, or Shot’s frenzied barking from the pines would surely bring her to the door. Just a little grey, unpainted cottage, as you see; with four rooms in it, and an attic overhead, that runs the whole length and breadth of the house. The cold South room is the dairy and apple-store; it is always fragrant with fruit, and bright with wide tin milk-pans brimmed with cream. These two front rooms that take the morning sun are the bedroom and the little sitting-room; the kitchen, at the back, gets the sunset. ”

“ From the wide leagues of air and sky on every side come showering down the carols of innumerable larks—Nature’s clear cry of joy. The grassy borders of the white road are green, its gorse hedges in flower. What masses of bloom! What clusters of burning orange, purest yellow, gold of unimaginable softness! The double, dark-green walls are one long blaze; the brilliance intoxicates one’s eye ”

“ To right and left the vast, sea-like level, interrupted only at wide intervals by little islets of dark, pointed trees, which hide the homesteads they surround, spreads serenely into space; behind, the empty stretch of it engulfs even the road, and rounds out upon nothing save the open, airy, and deeply coloured distance which, all the world over, proclaims the neighbourhood of that further void—the real sea. ”

“ And, accordingly, she pours some of the nicely warmed milk into a clean lime-juice bottle, fitted with an india-rubber teat; the rest, for replenishing the bottle, is put into a billy; and out we go, across the race, through the kitchen garden, with its lines of sprouting peas and cabbages, and so down to a little patch of grass, held, as it were, in an elbow of the race, and sheltered by a tall gorse-hedge. Here, in sunshine and safety, in a green pasture literally, and beside still waters, dwells Catherine’s especial flock. ”

“ The lambs fed, we are taken to admire the ultra-precious chicks, the new yard or so of fencing, Shot’s fresh kennel, made out of a beer-barrel (“Don’t I wish every beer-barrel had got a dog in it!” cries Catherine, that ardent Prohibitionist) , and, finally, a happy family of yellow single daffodils, laughing and nodding at the reflection of their own sunny faces in the race. “They’re very late this year, we’d moved the bulbs; but I think that only makes their coming all the pleasanter,” says Peter’s wife. ”

“ Ross! Brains are better than muscle, after all, even when it comes to farming. Long-headed experience is not altogether out of it in the race with dash and go.
But come, now, we really must be off, despite the kind and pressing invitation to “stay dinner.” Well, at least they will walk down the orchard with us, then, and see us on to the road (H’m! the hurdles will get untied this time!) ; and on the way Peter has his two new beehives to show us, white with clean paint, under the apple-green. This is a fresh venture—good rains to the clover-crop! And Catherine—well, there now! ”

“ Very likely, indeed, they smile still, and with a little superior pity, perhaps, at her infinitesimal bakings, the few pounds of butter she makes up every week, her careful selection of a basket of strawberries, or anxious packing of a box of eggs, to trade with at the store in town. And I dare say that their husbands, too, may sometimes get a little amusement out of Peter’s microscopic holding, his handful of stock, his tiny paddocks of rye and turnips, his minute methods, his humble, inconspicuous hopes. ”

“ It is a pity that they have no children, though, nobody to work for, and hand this cherished place to, when they die? A better land system, now, would earlier have rewarded Peter’s labours, and done its best to secure to the country descendants of so worthy a stock. Well, that is as it may be. I believe, too, that there is a little nephew of Peter’s, an orphan, still at home in England, whom Catherine has set her heart on bringing out as soon as it can be afforded. ”

“ And as for Peter, Peter is breeding his flock after a theory of his own, that he has never before had the opportunity to put into practice—and it is succeeding! “Ross’s brand” begins to be favourably known in the sale-yards. ”

“ Philosophers tell us that the best way to be rich is, to have few wants; but whenever I visit the Rosses I have my doubts of this, and suspect instead that the really richest man is he who has the most schemes up his sleeve. ”

“ Ross, here all day by yourself?”
“Oh, no, never!” she responds, with ever so bright a look. “I’m far too busy ever to be lonely. And then, there’s the lammies, and the chicken, let alone Shot and Peggy, you know, for company; and Peter’s mostly in to his meals, and always done by dusk. But I know what you mean, too. We don’t have so very many neighbours, and we always live retired—once a fortnight, coming out of church, is mostly my only chance to see folks. ”

“ But, if all these good people do laugh, it is certain also that they respect and like, while as for pity—pity forsooth!—pity is clean out of it. Not another couple in the district is one half so happy. ”

“ Now we are in the paddock, between the house and the road, and have only to follow the clear little water-race which runs across it—oh, but do be careful! That is the second of these foot-high trees, look, that you have nearly stepped on; and you don’t know what you are endangering! ”