Maggie durst not go back without it, but she stood in the passage till Nancy returned; and then she put up her mouth to be kissed by the kind rough old servant.

“Thou’rt a sweet one,” said Nancy to herself, as she turned into the kitchen; and Maggie went back to her dinner with a soothed and lightened heart.

When the meal was ended, she helped her mother to wash up the old-fashioned glasses and spoons, which were treated with tender care and exquisite cleanliness in that house of decent frugality; and then, exchanging her pinafore for a black silk apron, the little maiden was wont to sit down to some useful piece of needlework, in doing which her mother enforced the most dainty neatness of stitches.  Thus every hour in its circle brought a duty to be fulfilled; but duties fulfilled are as pleasures to the memory, and little Maggie always thought those early childish days most happy, and remembered them only as filled with careless contentment.

Yet, at the time they had their cares.

In fine summer days Maggie sat out of doors at her work.  Just beyond the court lay the rocky moorland, almost as gay as that with its profusion of flowers.  If the court had its clustering noisettes, and fraxinellas, and sweetbriar, and great tall white lilies, the moorland had its little creeping scented rose, its straggling honeysuckle, and an abundance of yellow cistus; and here and there a gray rock cropped out of the ground, and over it the yellow stone-crop and scarlet-leaved crane’s-bill grew luxuriantly.  Such a rock was Maggie’s seat.  I believe she considered it her own, and loved it accordingly; although its real owner was a great lord, who lived far away, and had never seen the moor, much less the piece of gray rock, in his life.

The afternoon of the day which I have begun to tell you about, she was sitting there, and singing to herself as she worked:  she was within call of home, and could hear all home sounds, with their shrillness softened down.  Between her and it, Edward was amusing himself; he often called upon her for sympathy, which she as readily gave.

“I wonder how men make their boats steady; I have taken mine to the pond, and she has toppled over every time I sent her in.”

“Has it?—­that’s very tiresome!  Would if do to put a little weight in it, to keep it down?”

“How often must I tell you to call a ship ‘her;’ and there you will go on saying—­it—­it!”

After this correction of his sister, Master Edward did not like the condescension of acknowledging her suggestion to be a good one; so he went silently to the house in search of the requisite ballast; but not being able to find anything suitable, he came back to his turfy hillock, littered round with chips of wood, and tried to insert some pebbles into his vessel; but they stuck fast, and he was obliged to ask again.

“Supposing it was a good thing to weight her, what could I put in?”