even with the agreeable addition of roast mutton and butter!
Well, it may be that no new country, after the first noble excitements of pioneering have died down, ever quite escapes this peril. It may be with healthy young nations as it is with healthy little boys, that the affairs of the soul interest them a very great deal less keenly than the affairs of the stomach—and, for the time being, rightly so. Nance’s next words, moreover, showed that, for her at any rate, one gateway of escape into the larger life was always open—the universal woman’s way, of the heart.
For, “What makes it all so worth while, you see,” she observed confidentially, as down under the leafy fruit-trees we gathered our aprons full of fallen fruit, “is, that it does make Dad so happy. When one feels dead-beat, you can’t think what a stand-by that is. And then, I do love the country; don’t you: the animals and flowers and things? We all do, Eva too. Besides . . . oh well!” finished up Nance rather abruptly, and as if she were taking a flying leap over a dangerous reason to a sound conclusion, “I wouldn’t change with any one, not if it was the Queen herself!” I could not help giving a guess at that reason she left in the gap, and unless I am greatly mistaken, the colour of its hair strongly favoured that of Master Miller’s.
When we got back with our apples, there was afternoon tea to be prepared, both for paddock and house; then we made the pies, and then it was milking-time. I never knew the hours to fly so fast as they did on that farm. Nance put on a short old skirt and a cotton overall, and led me
