THE MOTHER OF AN ANGEL


The Man in Possession was becoming more and more a favourite at Mr.
Flower's. One day Mr. Flower, taking pity on his loneliness, suggested
that he might possibly prefer to have his lunch in company with them all
down at the house. Henry gladly embraced the proposal, and thus became
the daily honoured guest of a family, each member of which had some
simple human attraction for him. He had already won the heart of simple
Mrs. Flower, few and brief as had been his encounters with her, and that
heart she had several times coined in unexpected cakes and other
dainties of her own making; but when he thus became partially domiciled
with the family, she was his slave outright. There was a reason for
this, which will need, and may perhaps excuse, a few lines entirely
devoted to Mrs. Flower, who, on her own peculiar merits, deserves them.

Perhaps to introduce Eliza Flower in this way is to take her more
seriously than any of her affectionate acquaintance were able to do.
For, somehow, people had a bad habit of laughing at Mrs. Flower, though
they admitted she was the hardest-working, best-hearted little housewife
in the world. Housewife in fact she was _in excelsis_, not to say _ad
absurdum_. No little woman who worked herself to skin-and-bone to keep
things straight, and the home comfortable, was ever a more typical
"squaw." Whatever her religious opinions, which, one may be sure, were
inflexibly orthodox, there can be no question that Mr. Flower was her
god, and, as the hymn says, heaven was her home. To serve God and Mr.
Flower were to her the same thing; and there can be little doubt that a
god who had no socks to darn, or linen to keep spotless, was a god whom
Mrs. Flower would have found it impossible to conceive.