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Croly was as completely the "house-mother" fulfilling the homely duties of the table, as, an hour later, she was the gracious, though more formal hostess receiving in her drawing-room the usual Sunday night throng of old friends and the strangers of distinction who, chancing to be in town, were fortunate enough to have letters of introduction to her.
But though the day is clear and the sun bright, Aunt Sue's snowbank is lifting its purple mass in the southeast again and, with the other Dorchester backwoodsmen, I am wagging my head solemnly and joining in a jeremiad concerning a big one next time. I should like to have known Aunt Sue. I picture her as a stout, keen-eyed, wise-headed house-mother of the old English stock.
The fire had burned low, and great, solid hickory coals were winking dreamily at us from out their fluffy coats of white ashes, just as if some household sprite there were opening now one eye and then the other, and looking in a sleepy, comfortable way at us. The close of my piece, about the good house-mother, had seemed to tell on my little audience.
And as the day wanes, the sleek cows, with considered careful walk and placid mien, wend their way homeward, bearing their heavy udders to the house-mother, who, pail in hand awaiting their approach, pauses for a moment to mark the feathered boaster at her feet, as he makes his parting vaunt of a day well spent and summons "Partlet" to her vesper perch hard by.
Baas Cogez, in the fulness of his heart, smiled on her through moistened eyes, and spoke of the way in which he would befriend her favourite companion; the house-mother sat with calm, contented face at the spinning-wheel; the cuckoo in the clock chirped mirthful hours. Amidst it all Patrasche was bidden with a thousand words of welcome to tarry there a cherished guest.
"You are the life of your friends," Godefroid said to her one day; "you are the tie that unites them, the house-mother, as it were, of some great work; and, as we are all mortal, I ask myself sometimes what your association would become without you." "That is what frightens the others; but Providence, to whom we owe our new book-keeper," she said, smiling, "will provide.
It was not until some hours of such thinking of more castle-building than the sober-spirited girl had done in her whole life before that she became painfully conscious that in all this dreaming of her future as the friend of the parishioners and the house-mother, Lurton himself was a figure in the background of her thoughts. He did not excite any enthusiasm in her heart.
Goodwin replied, opening the door and showing Blue Bonnet out. "Will you please let me know as soon as soon as you know yourself, Mrs. Goodwin?" The alarm in the girl's face appealed to the kind house-mother and she promised willingly: reiterating that Blue Bonnet must not come again to the Infirmary without permission.
She said this with deep solemnity, holding up her hands toward heaven as though to lay an infant in the arms of the Good Shepherd. The vision of a house-mother trusting the Lord even for the darning of stockings was an example of faith that touched the hearers. Under the lead of a few active women in the company a purse of two hundred dollars was collected and presented to her.
The Abbe Niollant's pupil learned to be fearless in criticism and ready in judgement; it never occurred to her tutor that qualities so necessary in a man are disadvantages in a woman destined for the homely life of a house-mother.
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