Naturally it had hurt her to relinquish Rotherwood, and it grieved her--for the girls' sake--that most of her old acquaintances in Grovebury had not troubled to pay calls at Wynchcote.

The small rooms, the one maid from the Orphanage, the necessity of doing much of the housework herself, the difficulties of shopping on a limited purse, and her husband's fretfulness and fault-finding, might have soured a less unselfish disposition: she had married, however, "for better or for worse," and took the altered circumstances with cheery optimism.

She was a great lover of nature and of scenery, and the nearness of the moors, with their ever-changing effects of storm and sunshine, and the opportunities they gave for the study of birds and insects, proved compensation for some of the things which life otherwise lacked.
Every morning, after the fuss of getting off the family to their several avocations, she would run down the garden, and stand for a few minutes by the wall that overlooked the moor, watching great shafts of sunlight fall from a gray sky on to brown wastes of heather and bracken, listening to the call of the curlews or to the trilling autumn warble of the robin, perched on the red-berried hawthorn bush.

Kind Mother Nature could always soothe her spirits, and send her back with fresh courage for the day's work.

And, in the evening, when husband and children came home to fire and lamp-light, she had generally some nature notes to tell them, or some amusing little incident to make them laugh and forget their various woes and worries.
"I'm so glad, Muvvie dear, you're not a melancholy lugubrious person!" said Ingred once.