Richard is dark, like father and me, very quiet, except in the matter of
affection, in which he is clingingly demonstrative, slow to receive
impressions, but withal tenacious. He clearly inherits father's medical
instinct of preserving life, and the very thought of suffering on the
part of man or beast arouses him to action. When he was only a little
over three years old, I found him carefully mending some windfall robins'
eggs, cracked by their tumble, with bits of rubber sticking-plaster, then
putting them hopefully back into the nest, with an admonition to the
anxious parents to "sit very still and don't stwatch." While last summer
he unfortunately saw a chicken decapitated over at the farm barn, and, in
Martha Corkle's language, "the way he wound a bit o' paper round its poor
neck to stop its bleedin' went straight to my stummick, so it did, Mrs.
Evan;" for be it said here that Martha has fulfilled my wildest
expectations, and whereas, as queen of the kitchen, she was a trifle
unexpected and uncomfortable, as Mrs. Timothy Saunders, now comfortably
settled in the new cottage above the stable at the north corner of the
hayland, she is a veritable guardian angel, ready to swoop down with
strong wings at a moment's notice, in sickness or health, day or night,
and seize the nursery helm.
It is owing to her that I have never been obliged to have a nursemaid
under my feet or tagging after the boys, to the ruin of their
independence.
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