Maggie, go and fetch a pat of butter out of the dairy." Maggie went from her untouched dinner without speaking.
"Here, stop, you child!" said Nancy, turning her back in the passage.

"You go to your dinner, I'll fetch the butter.

You've been running about enough to-day." Maggie durst not go back without it, but she stood in the passage till Nancy returned; and then she put up her mouth to be kissed by the kind rough old servant.
"Thou'rt a sweet one," said Nancy to herself, as she turned into the kitchen; and Maggie went back to her dinner with a soothed and lightened heart.
When the meal was ended, she helped her mother to wash up the old-fashioned glasses and spoons, which were treated with tender care and exquisite cleanliness in that house of decent frugality; and then, exchanging her pinafore for a black silk apron, the little maiden was wont to sit down to some useful piece of needlework, in doing which her mother enforced the most dainty neatness of stitches.

Thus every hour in its circle brought a duty to be fulfilled; but duties fulfilled are as pleasures to the memory, and little Maggie always thought those early childish days most happy, and remembered them only as filled with careless contentment.
Yet, at the time they had their cares.
In fine summer days Maggie sat out of doors at her work.

Just beyond the court lay the rocky moorland, almost as gay as that with its profusion of flowers.