Now is the noon of summer’s sweet content O’er field and hedgerow, valley and high hill; And hushed the music of the laughing rill Whose strength is stolen and whose song is spent! With anxious twitter all the birds lament The sudden gloom; the air grows strangely still. Vague murmurs all the valley seem to fill; The sun is blotted from the firmament. Hark! tis the diapason of God’s organ rolled Through all the field of stars; chord follows chord The march triumphant of our Blessed Lord, Who rides the sky in chariot of gold; And then the gloom is rent; with swift accord The beams, with golden arms, our forms enfold! [Illustration] CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH. BY MARGARET INNES. CHAPTER VIII. THE LADY-HELP FROM HOME—THE JAP—THE AMERICAN GIRL—THE GERMAN WOMAN—THE CHINAMAN WING LONG—OTHER CHINAMEN. I think I could write volumes on the miseries and discomforts inflicted by the ignorant and pretentious lady-help. Not for a moment would I say one word to wound the real honest workers, who can, however, be recognised at once, and I ought certainly to know, having been most devotedly helped and nursed through long years of ill-health by one of the best. But I speak of those women who have reached the age of maturity, and yet have never put enough earnestness into anything to learn to do even one single trifle well, and who tell you with an air, as though it were something to be proud of, that they have never done any work, but are quite willing to learn. It was unfortunately one of this helpless class that was sent out to me, and though she had undertaken to cook and bake in good style for her £70, she had not troubled herself to learn the rudiments of either cooking or baking. She told me, with a ladylike smile, that she had thought she would soon be able to pick it up from me! She had had some time before leaving England, when she might have taken lessons; but as far as I could learn, she spent the time in making a round of farewell visits. She considered herself eminently respectable and superior, and, I believe, thought that these virtues alone were worth her pay to any family. Before long, too, the ideas of equality, which she absorbed in a perfectly undigested state, went to her head, and made her take all kinds of liberties, which Americans born and bred would not dream of. It is certainly a fact that ignorant aliens, taking up these new ideas, have a most offensive way, quite their own, of interpreting them. We bore with muddle and confusion and fatigue for some seven months, longing to be able to dismiss her, but uneasy at the notion of her being adrift so far from home. We might have spared ourselves, as it so often happens, for she came one day to tell me, with a proud toss of the head, that she had found another place that would suit her better. So she went, leaving us thankful to escape from her on any terms.