Читать книгу Yonder Shining Light - Mary Esther Miller MacGregor - Страница 4

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Old Alf Laird gave the handle of the cream separator a last whirl, and straightened up. He put his hand to his aching back and uttered a groan. Or, rather, he started out on what was intended to be a groan, but right at its beginning his wife’s portly figure, in their son’s old sweater and cap, suddenly filled up the doorway of the milk house. The groan, so well begun, adroitly eased off into what old Alf hoped would sound like the mere clearing of his throat. He coughed elaborately.

“Oh, yes, yes, Mother,” he said with forced cheerfulness, “we’re jist about through. Here’s your cream.”

But in nearly fifty years of married life he had never yet been able to deceive Janet.

“I heard you! Groanin’ over that back of yours again! You’ll soon be an old cripple all right. Nettie jist ’phoned again. Collins came back to see her about the house. He’s goin’ to sell it right away. And the first thing we know we’ll miss it.”

Mrs. Alf was a fluent talker, and when on her favourite topic—her plan to move to town and leave the farm to their son—she was like the waters of the Georgian Bay beating the rocks on a windy night. Her husband was a little like the shore, with stubborn rocks in his nature; but he was given to yielding for the sake of peace. And there was no doubt that he had come to the age when a man should retire. Yet he could not imagine living where one could not have the land under one’s feet, to subdue and enrich, animals to care for, and crops to raise.

As for his rheumatism, hadn’t Doctor Mack Wallace always said “Don’t sit around and nurse your pains; get up and shake them off!” And all Lairdale knew there was no better doctor than Dr. Mack. Only he was away in uniform now, at a military camp. Indeed there seemed no help for Old Alf anywhere, with Janet and the girls all against him.

Even his only son, Alfred, who had always been on his side, had recently been turned into a reason for retiring. For Alfred was getting on into his forties and his mother had been afraid he was settling down into bachelorhood. But now she was hinting, with mysterious nods and winks, that she thought Alfred had a girl in his eye at last. Somebody pretty high and mighty, too! But she was sure he would never settle down unless they moved and left him alone.

Janet went off with her basket to the hen-house, and Old Alf walked on towards the stable. A great army plane roared overhead, coming up from the training camp to the south. There was another strong reason for retiring: the war. Every week the boys were enlisting from the farms. Folks were beginning to look down on any unmarried man not in uniform. If Alfred were married now, his mother pointed out, and here alone on this big farm, no one could raise an eyebrow at him.

He looked in at the stable door where the horses and the row of cows were munching their evening meal. He smoothed Cherry’s flanks—Cherry, who would not let anyone but himself milk her. Bud Armstrong came through with a huge forkful of hay. Bud was their good steady hired man, who lived in a small house on the edge of the farm: another reason for retiring, Janet often pointed out. Very few farmers had a hired man these days.

He felt a pain greater than the arthritis racking him; the thought of giving up. He and his old friend the minister had often discussed retiring, always agreeing heartily on one point: that it should be postponed as long as possible.

Janet came out of the hen-house with her basket full of warm brown eggs. She was going to see if Alice, the niece who helped in the house, had supper ready. He was about to join her, for it was near supper time and he was hungry; but she was still at the red brick house in town, with its bathroom, and its oil-burning furnace that never needed to be looked at, and its gas stove in the kitchen, and sidewalks right past the door. Old Alf suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to look at the lambs in the paddock behind the barn. He wouldn’t be a minute, he said, as he hobbled away. He walked slowly after he got beyond the shelter of the barn. Alfred had not come home yet, and there was no hurry. He wondered what could be keeping him.

Alfred had never worried his parents by staying in town late or neglecting his work, even in his youth. He had always been a model son and was now a model farmer. But he surely ought to get married. It had always been a mystery to his father why he never had. He was smart and good looking, and owned the best farm in the township; and here he was, past forty, and showing no sign of caring for any girl. Or had Janet been right, and he was thinking of someone? It would be hard to hide anything from Janet. Well, whoever she was, she would certainly jump at the chance of getting Alf, his father felt sure.

He climbed the slope behind the barn and looked down at his house standing in its lawn and garden. It was a huge house, built when the girls were growing up, in a day of florid ornamentation. It was dotted with little balconies and porches and bay windows, and there were rooms enough in it, he felt, to house the whole family, including his grandchildren. Why could not he and Janet take half or a quarter of the home and live there in peace, and let Alfred have the rest? He wondered if Alfred was seeing a girl in town this afternoon. He hoped and prayed that Alf would not bring an ignorant town girl out here, who would be scared at the sight of a cow.

Janet would like a town girl, he supposed. Janet had always been ambitious for the family. She had sent them all off to high school, and Alfred had had an extra year in Guelph Agricultural College. Not that it did him any good; but Janet liked the sound of it. And the three girls had married well. Nettie’s husband had a fine grocery store in Carlisle. Yes, Janet had done well by the children. It seemed rather like defying Providence to go against Janet.

It was a warm sunny spring day and he lingered, watching the lambs and their mothers milling about the little pasture. The barn was on rising ground and he could look down at his acres smiling in the May sunshine; the fall wheat a vivid green, the ploughed fields warm and brown, the cherry orchard a white mass of bloom. He could hear the rap-rap of a tractor and see his neighbour going slowly across the field. Seeding was well under way in the sheltered valley. Alfred and Bud had finished; Alfred was always ahead of the neighbours. It was a bad time to leave the farm. Fall, now, would be better. But he remembered ruefully that he had flatly refused to leave last fall, saying that in the spring he would think about it.

Buddy Armstrong went rattling down the lane in his little car, his day’s work done. A huge motor lorry filled with soldiers, shouting and singing, went thundering past. The sight of them stirred something warm and adventurous in the old man’s heart. The Lairds had Highland blood in their veins. An ancestor had fought at Waterloo, and another had marched under Sir Colin Campbell to the relief of Lucknow. He was thankful Alfred did not want to go ... and yet ....

A shining car was turning in at the gate. Alfred was home. The old man hastened towards the house. He noticed with some amusement that Alf was dressed in his very best suit and hat, just to go to town. Well, if he had been off on a sparking trip, Janet would soon find out all about it.

But even Janet was not quite acute enough to follow the workings of her cautious son’s mind. Alfred had indeed dressed in his very best and had gone to town. But the trip there was a clever feint. He had really been meeting the city bus that passed a mile away up on the Lake Shore Road. And he had done it in a way that would not arouse the suspicions of even his watchful mother.

The passenger bus that thundered haughtily along the paved highway from the town of Carlisle to points east took no notice of a farming community as obscure as Lairdale, tucked away down there between the Blue Ridge and the bay. Passengers journeying thither were dropped off at a corner on the main highway, a mile up from the shore, and found their way along the flower-bordered side road down into the valley of Lairdale. So Ellen Carruthers, the minister’s daughter, coming home from the city for a week-end, stepped off at this corner into the bright May grass and dandelions. She drew in a long breath of the perfumed air, waved her hand to her good friend the conductor, seized her small suitcase, and set off happily down the flowery way. It was so good to be home again; and this was a surprise visit to her father, so there was no one to meet her. But the church and manse were not much more than a mile away, and the walk along the soft, grass-fringed road was grateful to feet weary with city pavement.

At the first rise in the road the air grew fresher and the great stretch of the Georgian Bay smiled up at her a deeper blue than the cloudless dome above. All the little wild cherry trees and hawthorn bushes along the road were covered with fragrant blossoms. Brown creeks murmured under the culverts, and the pools by the roadside were blue with iris and choked with yellow marigolds. She swung blithely along. It was always good to come home; but in May, when bob white whistled clear and sweet from the wooded hollows, and the meadow larks rose and dipped and called over the vivid green pasture!—And wasn’t that a vireo? And there was a white-throat calling his endless love song to “Canada, Canada, Canada!”

Ellen was country-bred, and though she had the kind of temperament that could content itself wherever her lot was cast, she was never so happy as when she was in the open spaces of field and sky. The city had always claimed her: there had been school, and then college, and now a position in a busy city office. But the country was always calling her, and now that her mother was gone and her father was alone, she had a doubly strong urge to come home. She knew from experience that someone from Lairdale church would be sure to pick her up before she had gone far. But she hoped no one would come until she had crossed the Wappitti Creek bridge and seen how many thousands of marigolds were in bloom down there by the green water.

Every time she came home she loved the old place more, and sometimes dreamed of what it would be like if she could just come back to the old manse and care for her father now that he was alone and growing old. But that, she knew, was only a dream, for one had to have money to live. So she was at present planning a campaign to get her father to retire and come to the city where they would make a home together. It was a constant anxiety to think of him, with only a housekeeper in the gloomy manse since her mother’s death, and with his only son away in the air force.

She was so absorbed in this problem, which lived with her in the city through all her work, that she was unaware of the approach of a car until there was a gentle little sound of the horn and she stepped aside into the long grass and dandelions. As the car stopped beside her she looked up with pleased expectancy. Some one of her father’s congregation always picked her up when she came by this road; and here was Alfred Laird, leader of the choir, and son of her father’s best friend, Old Alf.

There was a saying in Laird Valley that if you threw a stick out of your woodshed door you would be sure to hit a Laird. And if it bounced off it would hit an Armstrong. The Lairds were the most populous, but the Armstrongs were the wealthiest and consequently the most important socially. Alfred Laird represented both families, having an Armstrong for his mother, and owning the finest and biggest farm in all the valley. And here he was in his handsome new car, dressed in his best, stopping for her on the road.

He jumped out and took her bag. That marked one difference between Alfred and the ordinary young men of the farm. His mother had trained him carefully in the proper conduct towards all women, and especially towards girls that knew what was proper like the minister’s daughter.

“Thank you, Alfred,” Ellen said as she took her seat. “I felt sure somebody from the church would happen along.”

She would not have been so complacent had she guessed that Alfred had not happened along at all, but had taken an entirely unnecessary trip to town and back, planned carefully to meet her bus at the corner on the chance that she would be there.

Ellen was particularly glad to see Alfred for her father’s sake. She knew the minister was a little worried about him. Alfred was leader of the choir and had always been a faithful church-goer. But during the past winter an evangelist had come to Carlisle and had established a new sect. He had driven through the country distributing tracts that went to show that the ministers of most of the orthodox churches were not preaching the Gospel, but were leading folk astray. The Peter Lairds and their family had been attending his services, and Alfred had gone several times and had been very much attracted to the preacher. In a talk he had had with Alfred afterwards the Reverend Mr. Peterson had given it as his opinion that Mr. Carruthers was a higher critic. Alfred had but a dim idea of what this meant, but it sounded ominous; and certainly the new evangelist seemed to know what he was talking about. Ellen was aware that her father was very anxious to keep his flock from wandering, knowing that the new man’s work would soon die down like an untended fire. To his daughter it all looked like appeasement, but for her father’s sake she determined to be as nice as possible to Alfred.

“Father does not expect me, so I might have had a long walk,” she said, giving him the radiant smile that always made friends for her. Alfred smiled back happily, but nervously.

It was only lately that his thoughts had turned towards the minister’s daughter as a possible mistress for his big house on the hill, and he was a little afraid of her.

He had never considered her very pretty, for Alfred was rather critical of feminine beauty. But he had to confess that since she had gone to the city with Islay Drummond, and got a fine position there, she had spruced up wonderfully. She had style too, and something indefinable that the other girls of Lairdale lacked, a gentle dignity that caused his nervousness.

When his mother had declared that his hair was thinning on the top and he must look around and get a wife, because she and his father were certainly moving to town, he had suddenly thought of Ellen. It happened on a Sunday morning when Mr. Carruther’s sermon was longer and less comprehensible than usual. From his seat in the choir, Alfred was looking out of the window and thinking of what his mother had said, and his eye caught the sheen of Ellen’s brown hair where she sat in her smart city clothes, her beautiful eyes turned up lovingly to her father’s face, her neatly gloved hands folded in her lap. Where could one find a girl like her in Lairdale? He had no use for town girls; they were all idle and always wanted to be going to the movies. And in the neighbourhood, he had to confess, all the girls of a suitable age were married or away. He had somehow missed his generation. Not one of the overdressed girls of the community scattered through the church could hold a candle to Ellen, he decided. Besides, she was well educated; a university graduate, indeed. He did not, he realized, know her very well, for her mother had sent her away to school and college, so that she had not mingled socially with the young people of the church except on short holidays.

Later he thought a great deal about her; and when his mother declared that she and his father were finally to move to town in the spring, he determined on a bold venture. It was bold for Alfred, for he was extremely cautious. Only once before in his life had he paid attention to a girl, and he had had to leave home and go sailing on the Great Lakes for a whole season, to escape her. Since then he had been the soul of caution. He felt that this plan to meet Ellen and take her home could not raise any suspicions. It looked so very casual. And it would be a chance for him to talk with her and let her consider what a good match he would be. It was high time she, too, was getting married. Ellen was twenty-five. Granma Armstrong, who knew everyone’s age, had said so, and had added that it was a dangerous age for a girl to pass.

Alfred kept his eyes steadily upon the winding road ahead as they drove sedately along, but his pulses were going faster than his engine.

Meanwhile Ellen, happily unconscious of what was in Alfred’s mind, was searching for topics of conversation. Music, of course. Alfred was one of the musical Lairds. So when she had enquired for his father and mother and their plans for moving to town, she asked:

“Have you not been playing your violin lately, Alfred? I remember how well you used to play at our church concerts.”

Alfred hesitated. Then he felt this might be a good opportunity to acquaint her with some of his new religious convictions. She would have to learn about them soon if he decided finally that she was his choice.

He shook his head, frowning. “To tell you the truth, Ellen,” he confessed, “I have long been feeling that the church is no place to play secular music, nor for a secular instrument like the fiddle. I haven’t been playing much since I heard the Reverend Peterson preach. He’s the new man at the True Gospel Tabernacle in town. He gave a wonderful discourse one Sunday night last winter on church music. It was a revelation to me.”

Ellen had a sense of humour that was often unruly at the wrong time. It threatened her safety now. Alfred, pronouncing solemnly upon what was secular or sacred in music and condemning the violin as worldly, struck her as funny. If her brother Ronald were only here to share it! But she sobered instantly.

“Perhaps,” she said gently, “even the fiddle can be made to sound God’s praises. They used all sorts of musical instruments in the temple services in Bible times.”

Alfred could not but be struck with admiration. Ellen always gave the soft answer that turned away argument.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said with unwonted humility, “but I sometimes wonder if a choir is any help to a service. I have been considering giving up the leadership. Those careless young people only meet for worldly gossip and fooling. There is no idea in their minds of praising the Lord.”

Alfred felt he was wise to tell her this so that she might pass it on to the minister, who didn’t seem to care who sang in the choir.

“But you have taught them to sing so well, Alfred,” Ellen said honestly, for the Lairdale choir was famous throughout the countryside. “You must not be discouraged. You do not know how much good you may be doing.”

She spoke earnestly. She was pleading for her father. Any disturbance or disaffection among his flock weighed heavily upon his heart. “You mustn’t resign,” she cried. “What would the church do without you?” Alfred was greatly pleased, and assured her he certainly would keep the work going, for the present at least.

They had turned into the Bay Shore Road and mounted one of the many Lairdale hills. Alfred’s home, the huge brick edifice topping an opposite hill, dominated the landscape. He nodded towards it.

“Awful big house for me to be left alone in, don’t you think?” he asked, and then stopped, suddenly abashed at his own recklessness.

But Ellen was very far from guessing what was in his mind, and agreed with him completely. “Have your father and mother really decided to move?” she asked.

“Well, I think so. Mother has decided, anyway,” he laughed indulgently.

“Have they bought the house on Elm Street?”

“Just waiting for Dad to close the deal. It’s a fine place, oil-burning furnace, and an electric fireplace; you just turn on a button and there it is. And a sun room at the back.”

Ellen was sufficiently impressed. But she was thinking of his father and her own father and the possibility of their retiring. They were climbing the hill now where the old stone church stood with the grassy, neglected graveyard behind and the old manse beyond, a wide low house of grey stone with a sloping veranda across the front.

Alfred drew up at the manse gate that hung between two great greening lilac bushes. He stepped out and handed her the suitcase. She thanked him again for the ride, and he stood for a moment looking away down the road.

“Staying home long?” he asked.

“No; just the usual week-end. I have to be back at work on Monday. Remember me to your mother, Alfred, and the girls, when you see them.”

“How’d you like to go for a drive up the Ridge tonight?” he asked, still looking far away down the road. “We could go to town to a movie if there’s anything good.”

Ellen was completely taken by surprise. She had known Alfred since they were children and had never even heard of his asking a girl to go to anything. She had a feeling of terror lest she were going to laugh, and then hurried to make excuses.

“It’s very kind of you, Alfred,” she said gently, for she saw he was overcome with nervousness, “but father is lonely, and he will expect me to make some visits with him tonight. I am really afraid that I could not leave him. But thank you, just the same.”

Alfred nodded approval. He was really rather relieved that she had refused. He had spoken on the spur of the moment, and was shocked by his own recklessness as soon as the words were uttered. It was much better as it was. He dare not set all Lairdale talking before he had really made up his mind. And then, though he admired Ellen very much and there was something about her that disturbed him profoundly, he really must not let her get ideas about his intentions too soon.

He drove away, well satisfied with his first venture, and Ellen opened the little picket gate and went up the pathway. The gate swung back with a rusty whine, and at the sound there came bounding around the corner of the house a shaggy brown dog, neither spaniel nor terrier but resembling both, her brother Ronald’s dog. She dropped her bag. “Old Rowdy! Rowdy, you old love!” she cried. He leaped up at her in convulsions of delight, trying to lick her face. In an agony of welcoming joy he squirmed and grovelled at her feet. Then he ran around her, his tail going so hard it was fairly working all his hind-quarters. “Old Rowdy,” she whispered, putting her arms about him, a choke in her throat. What would he do if Ron were to come home? Rowdy was inseparable from her brother when he was home and now Ron was away, and would soon be flying over to the war zone.

She quieted the dog, enjoining silence, and tip-toed into the house. She had taken the bus up from Harrington under the insistent feeling that her father needed her especially this week-end, and she wanted to surprise him. Tomorrow would be the anniversary of her mother’s death, and he would be more than usually lonely. Liza Laird, the neighbour who came over every day to cook his dinner, was away for a week seeing a sick niece.

The manse was big and old and shabby, but it had some pieces of good old walnut furniture that Ellen had polished up. And she had given the place a charming touch here and there with curtains and bright cushions. A door to the right led into the living-room, and the one to the left into the study. Both rooms were empty, and dust lay on all the furniture. In the living-room the old rocker where her mother had sat during her illness still stood by the bay window overlooking the garden. Ellen turned quickly away, a lump in her throat, and tiptoed down the hall to the kitchen. The dining-room was empty and tidy, but the long kitchen table was set out from end to end with soiled dishes: plates and cups and saucers for six. Her father must have been entertaining while he was alone! She peeped through the white frilled curtains of the low kitchen window. There he was, away down at the far end of the garden, putting in his tomato plants. He was tall and incredibly thin in the old sweater he wore. An ancient straw hat was set on the back of his head, and a lock of white hair hung down over his forehead. But for all his shabby clothes there was something distinguished about him, and in the eyes of his daughter, at least, he was a grand figure.

Her pet cat, which had been rubbing up against his legs begging for her evening saucer of milk, suddenly left him and came bounding up the path as though Rowdy, who was dancing about inside the kitchen door, had told her that the mistress was home. She came leaping into the kitchen, wailing.

“Mistress Gummidge!” Ellen cried reprovingly, lifting up the pussy and smoothing her black-and-yellow coat. “Now, you’ve gone and told on me!”

For she could see from between the curtains that her father had suddenly put down his hoe and was coming up the path.

Ellen Carruthers was twenty-five, as Granma Armstrong had declared. She was a graduate of the University of Toronto, and she held an important position in a large publishing house in the city of Harrington. But when she came home to her father she was his little girl, and the years dropped away. As he came up the back steps she slipped behind the open door among the brooms and mops, while Rowdy stood quivering in the middle of the floor, watching and panting with excitement. Her father came in and looked around the room. Then he moved the door and Rowdy burst into wild barking.

“Nellie! Child!” He dropped his straw hat on the floor and kissed her. “I did not expect you, but I felt something good had happened. When Rowdy left me in such a hurry I wondered, and then when Mistress Gummidge started for the house I said to myself ‘Can she possibly be home again?’ ”

He sat down with a sigh, but his face was radiant. “Well, well, well,” he declared happily, “you’re home! You should not come so often, my dear.”

“But I couldn’t help wondering how my poor old bachelor was getting along with Liza away. And actually I find you’ve been entertaining! Five guests!”

He peered across the disordered kitchen at the array of soiled dishes as though he had not seen them before.

“Tut, tut, no! Those are all my own places. You see I have been alone for two days. These are all the places I set for my meals since Liza left. There is where I had my breakfast this morning, and here my dinner. I thought I might as well leave them till the table was full and wash them all together. And now it is too late! I should have done them.”

His daughter laughed aloud. Ellen’s laughter was generally silent, but sometimes she burst out into a little crow of mirth that delighted her father.

“Oh, Daddy Carruthers, what a man! What a man! Never mind the old dishes. See what I brought you. Mr. James sent them.” She opened her suitcase and took out some magazines.

“The Atlantic! Six months! Well, well. He surely was kind.” He shoved aside a package of seeds and a box of tomato plants that were on the table, and spread out the magazines before him. “Ah, the Holmes articles! And I wanted to read them so much. That was indeed kind. Do you know, my dear, I find lately that magazine articles are almost all the reading I can accomplish. A book demands too much concentration, and I find the war coming between me and the page. I suppose you have had no more word of Ronald.”

“No, but there is a Halifax man in the office who has a son in Ron’s unit and he has not gone yet. But of course we won’t hear till they land.”

She came and sat on the arm of his rocking-chair and they looked out into the garden at the rows of daffodils that reared their golden heads against the grey stone wall. But what they both saw was a great winged plane flying over the heaving ocean.

“I am glad your poor mother was spared this,” he said at last. “She did not realize the war would be so long. Just a year since she left us, Nellie.”

“The season is late,” Ellen whispered. “Last year her tulips were all in bloom, and she asked me to bring her in some of the white ones.”

They sat together in wordless sympathy and communion, two lonely and loving hearts forced to live apart.

Then the daughter rose. “Take your magazines into the study, dear,” she said cheerfully, “while I straighten things and get our supper.”

He moved towards the door, but paused to look vaguely about the kitchen. “I fear I have made a great deal of work for you, my dear. There seems to be so much confusion about the house, somehow.”

Ellen laughed and urged him towards the door. “Never mind, I’ll soon straighten things. Go and read about Oliver Wendell Holmes and be ready to tell it to me at supper.”

She caught up her suitcase and ran upstairs to her bedroom. It, at least, was clean and tidy, as she had left it a week ago. She was soon out of her smart tweed suit and into a gay cotton smock. She looked in through the door of her father’s bedroom and a tender smile lit up her face, as she saw he had tried to make his bed. “Oh, the poor darling!” she cried, as she straightened the crumpled sheets and shook up the pillows.

She ran downstairs, restoring order here and there as she went. The dishes must be dealt with first. Soon she had a fire in the kitchen stove and plenty of hot soapy water. Ellen was at her best and happiest in her home. An untidy house needing to be restored to order and beauty called out all her resources. When the shining dishes were back on their shelves she went over the kitchen swiftly. It was only a few days since Liza’s strong hands had been sweeping and scrubbing and polishing, and the surface dust and disorder were soon removed.

She spread a gay luncheon-cloth on the little table drawn up near the fire. The evening shadows had fallen and the May night was cool. The fire and the lamplight made the place bright and cozy.

She managed to find eggs and milk and soon had supper ready. Her father came and sat down with a great sigh of content.

“My, my,” he cried, “this is better than setting a seventh place; and you got all the dishes away! I made my bed, didn’t I?” he asked anxiously. “I intended to.”

His daughter regarded him across the table with dancing eyes. “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, dear, but I could see your intentions were honourable!”

“Well, well, I am afraid I shall never make a housekeeper. Tell me all about yourself and what you were doing this week. Do you like the new work?”

“Book-reviewing? Oh, that’s lovely. At first it seemed positively wicked to be paid for reading novels. But oh, Father, you would be horrified at some of the stuff your daughter is reading these days. Do you suppose I might get my mind contaminated?”

Her father smiled. “Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove, covered with silver,” he quoted.

“Well, some of the pots are dreadfully sooty! What’s all the Lairdale news? I forgot to tell you that Old Alf’s Alfred picked me up on the cross-road and brought me home. And he seems to think the old folks are going to live in town.”

Her father’s face, she noticed, became shadowed. “Poor Old Alf has been fighting against it, but I suppose he will have to go. It’s hard to uproot an old tree.”

She was about to tell him how Alfred had wanted to take her to the movies, but suddenly checked herself. She was feeling a little uncomfortable about that. Better not to say anything about it.

“But Alfred says his father needs the rest. He should not be doing the heavy work on a farm.”

“I suppose,” her father said without conviction. There was a silence, and the daughter spoke timidly.

“Father, do you—have you thought any more over what we were talking about last week-end?”

She opened the subject reluctantly. Her father was past the retiring age for ministers, and she knew there were many in the Church who would be pleased to see him go. He was becoming forgetful, and since the death of his wife he had no one to attend to the many little details of his work that were so important. She knew that most of his people loved and revered him, and his influence for righteousness was strong throughout the community. But he was growing old, and his sermons were long and above the heads of the farmers who slept through them. And if there were many being led away like young Alfred, it would be much wiser for him to leave the Church now before he was asked to go. The burden of his lonely life weighed heavily upon his daughter’s heart. If she could only get him to retire, to come to Harrington, where they could have a cosy apartment and be together! He would have a small pension, and she could provide the rest.

Yes, he had been thinking about it, he confessed. “I have no doubt there are some here who would be happy to know I was leaving,” he said with a whimsical smile, “but I do not see how I could leave just now, dear, with the war on and so many of the younger ministers going into the army. It would seem as if I were not doing my bit.”

It was as though he were pleading his own cause, and a lump rose in his daughter’s throat.

“It is only that I thought—I wish we could be together,” she faltered when she could speak. “I think I’ll come home and raise chickens or angora rabbits or something, so I can be with you.” She spoke lightly, trying to ease the situation.

“Eh, that would be heaven on earth,” he cried. “But you must not sacrifice your life for me, child. But the war! Ronald at the front! It seems to be no time for laying down one’s armour.”

He rose and walked up and down the kitchen, his hands behind him, as was his habit when thinking through a problem. Ellen watched him, struggling to keep back the tears. He had done so much for her and Ronald, and now she was doing so little for him in his declining years. In her memory their parents’ lives had been one continuous sacrifice for their children. Her mother had been ambitious and had insisted upon a university course for them. Ronald had swept through college brilliantly, but his sister had been more of a plodder. Only by dint of all work and no play had she managed to graduate with a record that almost matched her brother’s. But her life had been a cloistered one. There had been no money for pretty clothes and social affairs. So there had been no dates and no friends of either sex, nothing but close study and hard work. And though she was blessed with a happy spirit and a bubbling sense of humour, the hard years of her youth had left their mark in a gentle diffident manner, and a look of wistfulness in her beautiful grey eyes. Her life in the city office where she was working was the best she had known. If she could only take her father with her and make a home for him, she would be satisfied.

He came back to his chair and sat gazing into the shining damper of the stove where the fire was crackling merrily.

“Perhaps it is my duty to retire, Ellen,” he said at last. “Sixty-nine! Next month is the time for the men in our church to make their changes, and if I go, I should tell the congregation at once. We have been here twenty years. And people grow tired of the same voice.” He paused, and Ellen’s loving heart ached for him. “But we must think it over, my child. Yes, I must try to do what is best, what the Master would want me to do.” He thought a moment, and his face brightened. “I’ll see what my good old friend Alf Laird does. If he can stand being retired, surely I can. Yes, I’ll wait and see how Alf gets along.”