'Yes, you might say with Hodge, "I mostly thinks o' nowt." Hodge, digging, is excusable, for there's no inspiration in the mould where the only variety is in the size of the stones and the worms that he turns up. But you are so different. I'm sure you would be happier if you were busier--"Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do."' Mrs. Severn listlessly submitted to the vehement kiss with which Anna finished her lecture. 'When you quote Satan I am at home, but I know nothing of Hodge,' she said in her slow mellifluous voice. Anna laughed. It was like demonstrating logic to a jelly-fish to argue with Clothilde. 'I really believe that's a fact,' she said, 'though Hodge lives at your doors, and we'll hope Satan has no foothold in the neighbourhood. But how profane we are! How shocked Canon Tremenheere would be if he heard us! By the bye, do you know his sister Julia's husband is dead--died after a few weeks' illness?' 'What could she expect when she married again?' 'He was a strong man and she has been so ailing. What sorrows she has had!' 'Sorrows? And if she has, she has had great joys too.' 'Oh Clothilde! Well, let us hope that will console her now. Do you think it would console you?' 'Me? How can I say, Anna? I know neither, I have had neither. The superlative does not enter into my experience of life.' 'It's your own fault then, dearest,' said Anna wistfully. 'Life is what we make it. Joy won't come unbidden; we must help to prepare the ground or there'll only be a weedy plant that will wither in the sun. The joys of one are the cares of another. I suppose Dad and the children are cares to you.' Mrs. Severn was silent. Anna turned, and leaning against the window looked down into the garden. Its midsummer brilliancy had faded with the sunshine, and the tangle of flowers, missing the caresses of breeze and sun and bees, looked subdued and shame-faced. At least so she fancied. A dewy sweetness hung above, floating up to her in incense-like whiffs. The landscape was becoming neutral. Above the valley there spread, as she looked, a haze of blue smoke from a cottage by the beck at the corner where it tumbled into the Woss. 'Mr. Borlase rode past about six,' said Mrs. Severn suddenly. She scrutinised Anna as she spoke. 'He would be going into Wherndale. Perhaps he'll come in for supper on his way home. Dad will be back soon.'