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.

A more complete and delighted absorption in the physical comforts and
nourishments of the human creature than Mrs. Flower's, it would be
impossible for dreamer to imagine. Such an absolute adjustment between a
being of presumably infinite aspirations and immortal discontents and
its environment, is a happiness seldom encountered by philosophers. To
think of death for poor Mrs. Flower was to conceive a homelessness
peculiarly pathetic; unless, indeed, there are kitcheners to
superintend, beds to make, rooms to "turn out," and four
spring-cleanings a year in heaven. Of what use else was the bewildering
gift of immortality to one who was touchingly mortal in all her tastes?
Indeed, Henry used to say that Mrs. Flower was the most convincing
argument against the immortality of the soul that he had ever met.

Yet, though it was quite evident that there was nothing in the world
else she cared so much to do, and though indeed it was equally evident
that she was one of the best-natured little creatures in the world, she
did not deny herself a certain more or less constant asperity of
reference to occupations which kept her on her feet from morning till
night, and made her the slave of the whole house, in spite of four big
idle daughters. And she with rheumatism too, so bad that she could
hardly get up and down stairs!

Probably nothing so much as Henry's respectful sympathy for this
immemorial rheumatism had contributed to win Mrs. Flower's heart. As to
the precise amount of rheumatism from which Mrs. Flower suffered, Henry
soon realised that there seemed to be an irreverent scepticism in the
family, nothing short of heartless; for rheumatism so poignantly
expressive, so movingly dramatised, he never remembered to have met.
Mrs. Flower could not walk across the floor without grimaces of pain, or
piteous indrawings of her breath; and yet demon