steep stony lane, more like stairs cut in the rock than what we, in the level land, call a lane:  it reached on to the wide and open moor, and near its termination there was a knotted thorn-tree; the only tree for apparent miles.  Here the sheep crouched under the storms, or stood and shaded themselves in the noontide heat.  The ground was brown with their cleft round foot-marks; and tufts of wool were hung on the lower part of the stem, like votive offerings on some shrine.  Here Maggie used to come and sit and dream in any scarce half-hour of leisure.  Here she came to cry, when her little heart was overfull at her mother’s sharp fault-finding, or when bidden to keep out of the way, and not be troublesome.  She used to look over the swelling expanse of moor, and the tears were dried up by the soft low-blowing wind which came sighing along it.  She forgot her little home griefs to wonder why a brown-purple shadow always streaked one particular part in the fullest sunlight; why the cloud-shadows always seemed to be wafted with a sidelong motion; or she would imagine what lay beyond those old gray holy hills, which seemed to bear up the white clouds of Heaven on which the angels flew abroad.  Or she would look straight up through the quivering air, as long as she could bear its white dazzling, to try and see God’s throne in that unfathomable and infinite depth of blue.  She thought she should see it blaze forth sudden and glorious, if she were but full of faith.  She always came down from the thorn, comforted, and meekly gentle.

But there was danger of the child becoming dreamy, and finding her pleasure in life in reverie, not in action, or endurance, or the holy rest which comes after both, and prepares for further striving or bearing.  Mrs. Buxton’s kindness prevented this danger just in time.  It was partly out of interest in Maggie, but also partly to give Erminia a companion, that she wished the former to come down to Combehurst.

When she was on these visits, she received no regular instruction; and yet all the knowledge, and most of the strength of her character, was derived from these occasional hours.  It is true her mother had given her daily lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic; but both teacher and taught felt these more as painful duties to be gone through, than understood them as means to an end.  The “There! child; now that’s done with,” of relief, from Mrs. Browne, was heartily echoed in Maggie’s breast, as the dull routine was concluded.

Mrs. Buxton did not make a set labor of teaching; I suppose she felt that much was learned from her superintendence, but she never thought of doing or saying anything with a latent idea of its indirect effect upon the little girls, her companions.  She was simply herself; she even confessed (where the confession was called for) to short-comings, to faults, and never denied the force of temptations, either of those which beset little children, or of those which occasionally assailed herself.  Pure, simple, and truthful to the heart’s core, her life, in its uneventful hours and days, spoke many homilies.  Maggie, who was grave, imaginative, and somewhat quaint, took pains in finding words to express the thoughts to which her solitary life had given rise, secure of Mrs. Buxton’s ready understanding and sympathy.