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.

CHAPTER VII

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.