Margaret Maliphant

								

It was not that she was weak either in mind or in body. Joyce would
often surprise one by her sudden purposes; and as for fatigue, that
slender figure could work all day without being tired, and though the
cheek was as dainty as the petal of a flower, it had nothing frail
about it: it told of health, just as did the clearness of the blue eye
and the wealth of the rippling auburn hair.
Joyce kept her complexion, partly because she was less out-of-doors
than I was; but if I had known that I could have had her lovely
skin instead of my own freckled face, I do not believe that I would
have changed with her. No doubt mother was right, and I might have
kept that--my one good point--if I had cared to. Red-haired people
generally do have fresh skins, and my hair is just about the color
of Virginia-creeper leaves in autumn, or of the copper kettle in the
sunlight. I was very much ashamed of it in those days.
Luckily, I gave little heed to my appearance. I was quite content
to leave the monopoly of the family beauty to my sister, if I might
have freedom to scour the marsh-land with Taff, the big St. Bernard;
and so long as my father treated me like a boy, and let me help him
superintend the farm, he might banter as much as he liked about
"Margaret's gray eyes that looked a different color every day," and
even rail at me for heavy eyelids that didn't look a bit as if I led a
healthy out-door life. But I did: when there was neither washing nor
baking nor butter-making to help with, I was out-of-doors from morning
to night. When I was a child it was with Reuben Ruck the shepherd, and
his black collie Luck, who was the best sheep-dog in the country.
Reuben taught me many things--where to find the forms of the hares upon
the marsh-land, the nests of the butcher-birds and yellow-hammers and
wheat-ears that were all peculiar to our home; he taught me to surprise
the purple herons upon the sands or by the dikes at eventide, to find
the pewits' eggs upon the shingle, to tame the squirrels in the Manor
woods, to catch gray mullet in the Channel, to spear eels in the dikes,
to know when every bird's brood came forth, to welcome the various
arrivals of the swifts and martins and swallows.
At the time of which I write, Reuben had had to give up his shepherd's
duties, owing to ill health, and used to do odd jobs about the house
and garden; but he had bred the love of the country in me, and now it
was useless for mother to bemoan my wandering habits, or even for our
old nurse, Deborah, to take me to task for not caring more about the
home pursuits in which my sister so brilliantly excelled. Whatever
related to a bird or a beast I would attend to with alacrity; but as
for household duties, I only got them over as quickly as I could, that
I might the sooner be out in the air. I knew every hill's crest inland,
every headland out to sea, every shepherd's track across the marsh,
every plank across the channels. The shepherds and the coast-guards