Women of the Country | Page 5

be directed by the Spirit, she had
no lack of confidence and determination. If her movements could be
kept secret she would do her utmost to make them so. She would send
the reply to an invitation to tea half over the country before it reached
its destination. Yet she would often pray in the prayer-meeting, and had
been known to do unusually bold actions as a matter of course.
When it became known that she had written a letter to the son of Squire
Nuttall asking him to give up his dissipated habits, which were the
scandal of the country, no one was surprised, though many were
shocked, and the poorer tenants of the estate alarmed lest some indirect
wrath might fall upon them. When neither Squire nor son took the
smallest notice of the letter she was blamed universally as having gone
too far, as if this chorus of subterranean condemnation might somehow
reach the Squire, who would know that the rest of his tenants had no
hand in the matter nor sympathy with the writer.
On the contrary, though she was secretive with her near acquaintances,

she would become greatly communicative with a casual vendor of
books, or even a vagrant to whom she had given a cup of tea, that
English equivalent for a cup of cold water. She was so fearful of falling
behind in sympathy with sinners that she fell into the unusual error of
treating them better than the saints. She was fond of doing small
generosities, especially to children, who were half afraid of her but who
would eat the big Victoria plums she gave them (leading them
stealthily round to the back of the house to do so), and recognize that in
some sedate and mysterious way they had a friend.
She would send presents to young people whose conduct had pleased
her, gifts which always excited surprise and sometimes derision. Once
she sent the substantial gift of a sack of potatoes to a young husband
and wife, but the present became chiefly an amusing recollection,
because, not having string, she had sewed the sack with darning-wool,
with the result that it burst open on the station platform before it
reached its destination.
A number of books, some of an old-fashioned theology, had been left
to Anne by an aunt who had had a son a Methodist preacher. This aunt
had also left her a black silk dress, which Anne had received with the
joyful exclamation that she knew she was really a king's daughter. The
books she read ardently and critically, underlining and marking, and
with them also she embarrassed the vicar to whom she lent them. He,
being a kind man, took the books and her comments in spite of his
wife's indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation,
which was in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young
women, and older men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought
her absurd, but young men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she
seldom thought them absurd, and understood something of the
ambitions with which their heads were filled. They were not, indeed,
unlike those with which her own was overflowing. Whenever she was
angry it was at any meanness or injustice, which seemed to arouse in
her a Biblical passion of righteous fury.
A small meanness in another depressed her as much as if she had done
it herself. Once she had walked five miles to deliver some butter and

returned utterly dejected, not alone from fatigue, but because she had
been offered nothing to eat or drink after her long tramp. It would have
been useless to point out to her that she had gone on a purely business
errand. It was one of those small meannesses of which she was herself
incapable, and a proportion of warmth had died out of her belief.
"You know my sister Jane's son?" said a farmer's wife, who had
stopped her trap at the cottage to pick up a lidded wisket in which some
earthenware had been packed. "He's getting a good-looking young man
and he's all for bettering himself. Well, he went and got his photo taken
at Drayton and brought them in to show his mother. She was making
jam at the time, and she's not an easy tongue at the best o' times.
'What's that?' she says; 'you don't mean to say that's a likeness o' thee?
It looks fool enough.' She says she never saw 'em again, he went
straight out and burnt 'em."
"He chose the wrong minit," said her husband beside her. "If he knew
as much about women as I do, for instance."
"Just you mind," said his wife, warningly. "Why, Miss Hilton,
whatever's the matter?" she added, catching sight of Anne's face.
"It