Читать книгу Yonder Shining Light - Mary Esther Miller MacGregor - Страница 6

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Ellen had come home with one burden on her mind, and instead of being relieved of it she found herself shouldering another. The more she thought of Alfred’s invitation the more she was disturbed. Such conduct in any other young man of the congregation would have passed unnoticed. But Alfred was not just another young man of the congregation. For years he had enjoyed the reputation of being the one eligible and unattainable bachelor on the Bay Shore. As far back as even Granma Armstrong remembered, and she knew everything that had happened in Lairdale since pioneer days, there had been only one girl-episode in Alfred’s life.

A very pretty teacher from Carlisle had come out to the Lairdale school for one term, and every boy that owned a car was using up his gasoline driving her to town. Alfred was young then, and he joined the taxi service. But the passenger suddenly began to show so decided a preference for him and his car that Alfred became alarmed and fled. That was the spring he went sailing up the Great Lakes, and by the time navigation had closed she had resigned.

Since then Alfred had been afraid of girls. He treated them all with strict impartiality. But, as Granma Armstrong pointed out, Alfred was getting on. And, as all the Bay Shore pointed out, he needed a wife, now that his parents were planning to move to town. The thought that the choice might be about to fall upon her filled Ellen with dismay. Alfred was a good son and the very centre of his father’s and mother’s life. Whoever offended Alfred would mortally offend the minister’s best friends.

But she was not given to dwelling on her troubles. So the next morning she was out in her garden early, Rowdy at her heels, planting the seeds she had brought from the city, and singing Ronald’s favourite song, in gay defiance of fate—

“Odds, Bobbs, hammer and tongs, long as I’ve been to sea,

I’ve fought ’gainst every odds, and I’ve gained the victor-eee!”

She was planting all her mother’s favourites: sweet peas and stocks and gay pinks, and a border of sweet alyssum for each bed. Her father left his vegetable beds at the back of the house and came around to help, for the joy of being with her.

“What about coming with me this afternoon to see Mrs. Peter Laird?” he asked, as they finished off the last trench for the sweet peas.

Ellen straightened up from the earth and made a face of comic anguish.

“Oh, Mistress Gummidge,” she cried, addressing her cat, who was curled up daintily on top of the fence, watching the gardening. “Another lone, lorn creature like yourself to be visited! What’s she got now?”

“Well, well, I think it’s perhaps nerves; but she’s had the flu. These poor folk miss Doctor Mack Wallace. Nobody else will do. But if you would rather not, dear—”

“Oh, yes, of course,” she cried contritely, “it’ll be lovely to go for a bit of a drive. Let’s go a-visiting all afternoon!”

Mrs. Peter Laird was quite the last person in Wappitti township that Ellen would have chosen to visit on a May day, or any other day, but she well knew that her father liked to have her with him on just such visits. He sensed a lack of sympathy in some homes, and actual antagonism in others, like the Peter Laird’s; and he always found that his daughter’s presence sweetened the social atmosphere. She would go into the house and talk to the women and children, leaving him free to visit with the men at the barn or in the field.

So, after the early mid-day meal, Rowdy was shut up in the woodshed, disgusted at being left alone with the cat, and Ellen brought the car out of the shed; a high old-fashioned little box full of rattling machinery.

“This poor thing has certainly passed the retiring age, Father,” she said gaily. Her father leaned back happily as they turned out into the blossom-lined road.

“Well, daughter,” he declared, “when I drive down the Bay Shore on a day like this, with you at the wheel, I wouldn’t trade it for the royal state coach!”

The old stone church and manse had been built on the corner of a farm owned by two Laird sisters, Tilly and Liza. Their lane ran past the manse garden, and was screened from it by a clump of tall spruce trees, fresh in their new spring green. The farm gate stood open, suggesting an invitation to enter.

“Shall we run down to the house for a minute, and see how Gideon is getting on planting his potatoes?” Her father asked.

Ellen swerved into the lane, a long hill bordered with hawthorn and cherry, all in bloom. It led into the yard at the side of the big red brick house. The Laird sisters had been left this farm by their father, and for several years the two women had managed fairly well with the help of a hired man, until Tilly, the younger, married him.

Gideon Begg was a good steady fellow, kind and hard-working, but somehow he and the sisters always seemed to be at variance with the calendar. They were always in the midst of a job that belonged to the season before. Young Geordie Laird, who was uncle to Tilly and Liza, always said that Gid was the best farmer on the Bay Shore: the only trouble was that the weather would not co-operate. If only it were possible to make maple syrup in seeding time, and have the threshing and Christmas dinner all in one!

The confusion and complications attending the Begg farm were further aggravated by the presence of young Andy Armstrong, an orphaned nephew of the sisters, who made his home with them when he was not away sailing the lakes. Andy was a big-hearted, gay, irresponsible lad, and the sworn vassal of Ellen Carruthers since the summer she had striven to teach him in her Sunday School class.

As she drove into the yard before the house, the old farm dog came bounding towards them with a furious barking, tempered by an equally furious wagging of his tail, for Sailor knew the minister’s car. The yard was strewn with boards and boxes and odd bits of machinery. In the midst of the confusion stood a small car fairly glittering with a coat of wet bright-blue paint. A pair of long legs, in ragged overalls, were sticking out from underneath it, and Ellen was at some pains to avoid them as she drew up.

As she stopped, the legs began a tumultuous wriggle; and the rest of a tall young man emerged and staggered to an erect position. Andy’s face was streaked with earth and car grease, and his reddish hair stood on end, but even under these disadvantages he was good to look at, with his bright hair and his flashing dark eyes.

“Hello!” he shouted in delight. “Hello, Mr. Carruthers! Hi-yah, Ellen! Glad to see you home! Say, will the folks ever be sorry! They ain’t back from town yet!”

“How are you and Gideon getting on with your potatoes?” Mr. Carruthers asked anxiously.

Andy leaned easily against the car. “Well, we didn’t jist get around to them. We’re goin’ to start as soon as they get home.”

No, Aunt Liza wasn’t back yet, but she ’phoned Aunt Till that she’d be here Monday. The folks had gone in to get the baby chicks. Four hundred o’ them! At least Aunt Till went for them. Andy laughed gaily. “Gid jist had to go along. He’s awful mad about them chickens. He hates hens around the barn.”

Mr. Carruthers said he must see the new brooder-house they had been telling him about, and he and Ellen stepped out. The shining car, too, came in for their admiration. Though Andy was making but a bare living as hired man on his Aunt’s farm, he always managed to own and run some sort of collection of parts that resembled a car. And, as he was good tempered and generous, someone was always borrowing it, and bringing it back a wreck.

As they picked their way toward the new hen-house, Andy sidled up to Ellen.

“Gettin’ all shined up for Florrie,” he whispered. “Goin’ to the dance Monday night!”

Ellen smiled sympathetically. Peter Laird’s Florrie was Andy’s girl, and they were always having quarrels that Ellen was called upon to patch up. It was a relief to know that things were running smoothly. Ellen wished Andy would care less. The boy’s eyes proclaimed him one of the perennially orphaned children of the world. When they were not dancing with mischief and glee, there lay in their depths the tragic look that rests always in the eyes of those who have been cheated of a mother’s love in childhood. Ellen was not sure of Florrie, and Andy’s heart was big and generous.

“Sorry not to ask you in,” Andy said, suddenly remembering his manners when they returned to the car. “Aunt Till said they’d be back for dinner and she told me to put the meat into the oven and the potatoes on to boil at eleven o’clock. And I did. On the dot. And they’ve been cooking like nobody’s business ever since. Guess they ought to be nearly done, eh?” He looked at Ellen solemnly, but his eyes were dancing.

“You ought to be made to eat them,” she said severely.

Andy leaned against the car with a loud laugh, and then suddenly straightened and stared towards the bay. “Oh, look, look!” he cried eagerly. “Lookit, will you?”

All the hills of the Laird valley sloped down towards the blue reaches of the Georgian Bay. And across the great shining expanse, above the bright green of the cedars and birches that fringed the shore, a Great Lakes steamship was surging forward, gleaming white against the intense blue, silver spray leaping from her bows, a gay plume of smoke waving behind her.

The boy stood gazing after her with the eyes of a lover.

“The Madawaska!” he whispered. “Her first trip!” They watched in silence as the shining vision slowly passed out of view behind the trees of the shore. Andy turned to Ellen and she was disturbed by the tragedy in his eyes.

“I-I was turned down again,” he whispered. “The army! First the navy and now the army!”

The minister put a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder. “But the navy and the army and the air force have to be fed, Andy,” he said. “We can’t let all the men behind the guns go to the front. You are doing your bit, and a very big bit here, raising food.”

Andy straightened and tried to smile. “I’d a liked to go sailing,” he said dully.

They got away at last, but not before Andy had managed another whispered word with Ellen. “Goin’ to Peter’s?” he asked, and she nodded. “Say, could you find out, if it’s not too hard, if she’s—if Florrie’s goin’ anywhere tonight?” She promised, and they drove away. Ellen’s heart was disturbed for the boy. This was his second big disappointment. Andy was such a lone sort of waif, and Florrie was a selfish girl who would take all she could get of treats and car rides and throw him over whenever a more desirable suitor appeared.

“I suppose Andy never heard of Masefield,” her father said, “but he has the same sea fever. The poor lad’s heart is crying ‘I must go down to the sea again!’ ”

“Turned down again on account of his eyes!” Ellen mourned. “And if he had had glasses when he was little I have no doubt his sight would have been all right now.”

“These lads brought up on the shores of the Great Lakes,” her father mused, “they’re never quite landsmen again after they’ve been away sailing, and they all go sailing sooner or later. And when the sailor comes back to the farm he may be away in the back pasture cutting his winter wood, and he looks around and there is the bay smiling and beckoning again. Andy was ready to leave, right there.”

“I know how they feel,” Ellen declared. “When I’m sitting in the office these May days and feel a breeze through the window, I see Lairdale and the bay and I feel as if I must throw Francis and Blair and all their books out of the windows and fly straight home.”

“Ah, well, well,” he said, “you are made for home, child. Like your mother. But you must not spoil your life by burying yourself back here. You will have your own home someday, I hope.”

Ellen shook her head. She honestly confessed to herself that she had never, so far, been asked to make a home for anyone. And now the thought of the one that might be offered her loomed like a terrible shadow on the horizon.

Her father suddenly straightened. They were passing the end of Alfred Laird’s splendid acres, and a figure could be seen just inside the fence.

“Isn’t that Old Alf down there by the road? Stop a minute, dear. I must speak to him.”

Ellen slowed up reluctantly, but was instantly relieved to see that only Alfred senior was there. The old man was standing under a snowy blooming cherry tree, fixing a piece of barbed wire that topped the rail fence.

“Hello! Hello!” the minister called heartily. “It’s a grand spring day, Alf! Indeed I think it’s summer!”

The old man looked up, and a beaming smile wrinkled the leathery brown surface of his face. He came quickly nearer, limping noticeably, and settled himself against the fence rails.

“Well, well, hello!” he shouted heartily. “You’re dead right, it’s summer!”

Ellen pulled up the car close to the fence. The old man nodded to her.

“Home again?” he said happily, and Ellen answered as happily, “Home again!”

“And what’s this I hear about your moving to town right away? I thought you wouldn’t go till the fall,” the minister said.

The old farmer was silent for a moment, shaking his head. “The wife’s set on it and I guess we gotta go.”

His friend looked at him and nodded in deep sympathy. “I suppose retiring is always hard, Alf. I must be thinking about it soon myself.”

“Not you! Don’t you do it, Mr. Carruthers!” He looked at Ellen accusingly. “Is she kickin’ like Janet and the girls?” he asked in a lower tone.

“No, no!” Ellen’s father hastened to acquit her. “But we’re all coming to it soon, unless one were fortunate enough to die in harness.”

“Sure, and that’s the only way. I wouldn’t mind easin’ up a little either, long as I was home. But sittin’ around in town with the weemin walkin’ over you!” He leaned over the fence and lowered his voice.

“Say, Mr. Carruthers, did ya ever live in one o’ them apartment traps they put folks into in town?” He put the question with a shamed air, as if he were enquiring if the minister had spent any time in jail.

Mr. Carruthers confessed that one summer he and his wife had lived in an apartment for the space of a week, when they were visiting his sister in Cleveland.

Old Alf shook his head. “Ain’t that awful?” he sympathized. He glanced back towards the house, as though his wife might hear him even across a ten-acre field. “Livin’ on a roost in a hen-house! Mother and the girls had one picked out for us in town. All upstairs, not a place to put the sole of your foot on God’s earth. Say, I got my dander up that time! Well, I thought that would be the end of it; but first thing I knowed Nettie and Muriel had their heads together again, and they’ve picked out a house. And now they’ve got Alf on their side!”

His brown face suddenly began to pucker up with laughter, his shoulders began to heave. “Mother’s got an idea that Alf’ll get a housekeeper of his own if she’ll only get out. I dunno. He’s been mighty hard to put a halter on so far, and I’ve no idea who thinks she’ll get him hitched up this time. Some girl in town, I bet, that’s never seen a cow milked. Anyways, his mother thinks it would kinda hurry him on if we got out!”

Ellen was sitting, looking far out over the bay, struggling between a feeling of dismay and an hysterical desire for laughter, while the old man continued his protests. The girls were always making a great talk about the wonderful garden he would have. And he bet if you stuck a half-dozen tomato plants in it you couldn’t get back to the house without steppin’ on them! Mr. Carruthers oughta just go and look at the place next time he was in town. Elm street, that was it. But he’d forgotten the number. But that was what they were comin’ to, jist numbers, like convicts in the penitentiary. He’d just about as soon go to penitentiary anyhow. They had lots of land there for a man to work on.

“If only Doctor Mack Wallace hadn’t enlisted,” he mourned, “I bet I’d never a’ had to go. But eh, Mr. Carruthers,” he looked up at his friend, his old eyes filled with both mirth and tragedy, “when Janet and the girls gang up on me, there’s jist one thing for me to do. I’m seventy-five.”

The minister leaned out and put his hand on the old farmer’s rough shirt-sleeve.

“I’m not many years behind you, Alfred.” he said. “I know how hard a trial it is for you. But the Lord has promised ‘As thy days so shall thy strength be.’ It may not be strength of body. The poor old frame will get weak, but He can give strength of soul.”

Ellen’s eyes were dim as they drove away. Her father had a message of hope and comfort for everyone—a rebellious young lad like Andy, and a poor rebellious old lad like Alfred Laird. She felt ashamed of her efforts to get him to retire; she was no better than Nettie and Muriel!

At each turn in the road there opened a wider vista of the great bay, and once again the Madawaska appeared, far on, heading for port. The Bay Shore Road, everyone called it; and the name fitted it, for the bay was never quite out of sight, even when it was only a blue line above the tree tops.

Summer visitors who came out in large numbers to the cooling breezes of the Bay Shore were puzzled over the names of the roads, and were always getting lost among the Lairdale hills. For the paved highway where the bus ran out from the town, a mile or so up in the hills, was called the Lake Shore Road. In its name lay the early history of the settlement. In pioneer days the new settlers came out with their axes and cut a road through the dense forests, and as the great monarchs fell before their fury, they opened out magic casements on the fairy reaches of the great blue bay, and beyond, the ocean of Lake Huron. And so in their mistaken zeal they named the corduroy trail they had opened up the Lake Shore Road.

Later there came the Lairds and the Armstrongs who settled below the hills, down closer to the water. They, too, hewed out a corduroy road to town, one that paralleled the first. And with very good reason they, too, called the new highway the Lake Shore Road, and like the good tenacious Scots they were, they demanded that the hill dwellers give up their name. But the Lake Shore Road folk were good Scots too, fortified by a dangerous sprinkling of Irish, and they were not giving up anything to anybody on demand. And so the outraged dwellers down by the water front called their highway the Bay Shore Road.

All this had long been forgotten, even by Granma Armstrong. The Lake Shore Road, high up beyond the hills, was often a cause of confusion and bewilderment among summer tourists; but all the countryside accepted it unquestioning. When the young folk from the hills would come down for a day’s swimming or fishing to the Bay Shore, neighbours in Lairdale would ask, “And how is everybody up on the Lake Shore?” having quite missed the incongruity.

The Bay Shore Road, which wound through the valley they had named Lairdale, following the irregular line of the water, was indeed a garden path. And on this bright May day its flowery curves, its space-viewing hills, and its cool green hollows were lovelier than ever. Ellen was sorry when they drew up at the gate of Peter Laird’s farm.

The head of the Peter Laird family was a shrewd business man, bent on making money, and the mother was ambitious and jealous of her prosperous neighbours. The family of three boys and two girls were what might have been expected, their teeth set on edge by the sour grapes of their parents’ worldly ambitions. Lately they had been keeping aloof from their neighbours. The three boys were of military age, but none of them had enlisted, and those whose boys were in the fight overseas were beginning to look at them askance.

Ellen went into the house while her father drove on out to the barn. She was met at the door by Florrie, a pretty girl with black curls and bright blue eyes. Mrs. Laird was sitting in the chilly parlour, wrapped in a shawl.

“My, my, I can hardly believe it,” she cried, as she shook hands. “I said to Marguerite, last week when I was so bad, I says, ‘Well, Mr. Carruthers will have to come here if I die, to conduct the funeral!’ ” No, none of them had been at church lately, she went on. She just couldn’t drive the boys to go, and she had been too sick herself. And the girls seemed to be all taken up with the new young man at the True Gospel Tabernacle. He was a wonderful preacher.

Ellen strove to make polite conversation, but made little headway against the stream of Mrs. Laird’s complaints. Though she longed to rise up and leave before her father came in, she had to wait his coming with as good a grace as possible. But his presence somehow seemed to bring a fresh and more kindly atmosphere into the stiff chill room. He read words of comfort and cheer from his little pocket Testament, and led in prayer. His gentle kindly voice, uttering words of truth and love, spread a balm over the veneer of pretence and ill humour. He prayed for the family, for the father with his heavy responsibility, for the sons and daughters facing the great adventure of youth, and for the mother, the centre of the home, that she might be soon restored to health and strength. And when they rose to go, Mrs. Laird thanked them for the visit and said she hoped they would all be out at church soon again.

Ellen was wondering how she would get a word with Florrie alone, and was surprised when the girl followed her out to the car. She asked after Ronald, and then said shyly that if Ellen should happen to see Andy passing would she tell him it was all right about tonight?

Ellen drove away in silence. Her father guessed the cause of it.

“One must not mind Mrs. Peter,” he said. “Just now, without recognizing it, she is on the defensive. She is ashamed that none of her boys has enlisted. All the mothers of our soldier boys hold their heads high, even though they have breaking hearts. And Mrs. Peter cannot be one of them.”

“Well, she need not take it out on you,” Ellen said indignantly. “Oh, Father, I wish——” she stopped suddenly. “I wish I could get some of those cherry boughs to put in the church tomorrow,” she substituted.

“That wasn’t what you started to say,” he said, laughing.

“Well, no, it wasn’t; but never mind. But I do wish churches didn’t have so many Peter Laird families in them.”

“Ah, well,” he said smiling, “after all, dear, the Peter Lairds of our churches are the needy folk. They are our poor who must be fed and clothed. They have poverty of soul. Both the father and mother in this family are in danger of growing harder every day. If all the congregation were like Mrs. Steve and good Old Alf, and Young Geordie, I should grow fat and lazy with nothing to do!”

“Oh, Father!” was all Ellen could say, for the lump in her throat. But there was a world of love and adoration in the word, and her father understood.

There was one more visit to make. They turned in at a farm gate, and ran up a steep lane to the old stone house on the face of the hill.

There was a trim row of poplars on one side of it and a rich ploughed field on the other where the plovers ran and piped and implored them not to come too near. This was one of the first houses built in the Laird Valley, and was known as the Old Home Place. It was a picturesque grey stone building—three houses, indeed, built into one, and set in the midst of a fine old garden. Ellen looked around in delight as they entered the yard. There was the old low wing that belonged to her friend Islay Wallace. Here Ellen had spent the happiest summer of her life, with her friend Islay. She had inherited this farm from an old aunt and had come to spend the summer three years ago, and Ellen had come up on her bicycle from the manse to help with the housework. There had been work that was only play, and much young laughter and gaiety, and a romance between Islay’s niece and one of the Lairdale boys. It had been Ellen’s first summer of carefree youth and fun, and it had been the opening of a new life for her.

But the young friends were all gone now, and only Annie Pierson and her two children were left. And here her father’s comforting strength and faith were surely needed, for the husband and father was away at the front. Annie Pierson was a Laird by descent. She and her husband and family had come to Lairdale on a weary trek after six years in southern Saskatchewan without rain. Here they had found a haven and friends, and here she was living in the old home where her mother had been born. And now all this new-found happiness and security were gone, for at the first sound of the war drums her husband had marched away and was now at the front.

Ellen jumped out of the car and her father drove on towards the barn. The kitchen door was thrown open and a fair young woman with a curly-haired toddler at her side called a welcome.

“Oh, come away, come away,” she cried, in delightful contrast to the last visit. “I’m that glad! I didn’t know you were home, Ellen!”

She drew her guest into the kitchen, apologizing for the disorder. She had started her spring housecleaning, she announced. Ellen must see the rooms for Islay and the Doctor, they were all ready if they should come. “But, oh, I’m that glad to see you!” she burst out again.

She drew up her best cushioned chair and Ellen sat down and immediately leaped up again. The baby was reaching up to the table, already set for the early farm supper, and was doing his best to upset a bowl of pickled beets upon his beautiful curly head. Ellen caught the bowl just before it descended, and set it back into the middle of the table.

“Oh, my, my, Bobby!” his mother wailed. “Ain’t he awful? He gets into everything, and Artie laughs at him and jist makes him worse.”

He staggered over towards the stove, and was reaching for the boiling teakettle when Ellen caught him up and held him on her knee, where he squirmed rebelliously. He was a beautiful child, strong and sturdy, with golden hair and apple-blossom skin; but the soul of a bold and determined marauder dwelt beneath this innocent exterior.

“We were wondering how you were getting on, Annie,” Ellen said, “since Wilfred left. Is it very hard?”

Annie Pierson turned from the stove where she had been placing the kettle in a safer position, and Ellen looked at her in surprise. She had expected grief, though suppressed, for Annie never complained; but she was unprepared for the look of shining pride in her faded eyes.

“I guess you were surprised, like everybody else, weren’t you?” she asked. “I guess everybody on the Bay Shore was surprised. But you couldn’t keep Wilf home. He’s English, you know.”

Ellen experienced a rush of warm sympathy. Annie was transformed with a new dignity. Almost three years before she and her husband and one child had come as derelicts to the Bay Shore, and because Annie was a Laird the whole valley had given them help and comfort. And when Islay Wallace returned to the city she turned the Old Home Place over to them. But no one could restore to them their pride; and now they had found it again. Wilfred Pierson, the tramp from Saskatchewan’s dried-out area, had been the first man on the Bay Shore to enlist, the first to march away in defence of his country.

“It’s awful lonesome,” the wife faltered, “and at first I jist couldn’t see how I was to get along. But you couldn’t keep Wilf home. He’s English, you know. I knew from the first it would be like this. That night the news came over the radio that England had declared war—Bobby!”

The embryo pirate had struggled out of Ellen’s arms, and was off again on his adventuring. This time he had managed to get up on a chair and reach for a pitcher on a shelf above the sink. It contained maple syrup from the early spring harvest of the Old Home maples. Both women sprang this time, but both were a second too late. The pitcher poured its contents right on top of the baby’s curly head. He let out a roar of indignation and fright, suddenly cut short when the streaming sweetness reached his lips, and he discovered that the adventure had not been entirely without profit.

While the mother scrubbed the sticky baby, Ellen mopped up the sticky chair and floor and shelf, and placed the jug on a higher level. As Annie’s daily routine consisted of such disasters she was not unduly disturbed, and took up her story calmly where she had been interrupted. Ellen lifted the scrubbed and chastened baby to her knee again and showed him a picture book while she listened.

“I’ll never forget that night England declared war. Wilf had been workin’ over at Steve’s and heard it on the radio. And he jist sat and hardly spoke a word at supper. He hardly ate a bite. And after the chores when he came in he jist sat and didn’t speak. And Artie was watchin’ him and he kept saying, ‘Are you sick, Daddy?’ But I couldn’t ask him, ’cause I knew what was troublin’ him. And after Artie had gone to bed and the baby was asleep, he says to me, he says, ‘England’s in it,’ he says; and I knew what he meant. And I jist couldn’t say anything. And then he says, ‘I’ve got to go, Annie. I’ve got to go,’ he says.

“I was standin’ here at the stove, heating the baby’s milk, and I jist stood. I couldn’t move ’cause it seemed as if the floor was movin’ round, and I was afraid to step. And I jist stood here and he sat there and jist kept sayin’, ‘I’ve got to go, Annie, I’ve got to go.’ And I could see he was jist in misery. He was born in England, you know, though he don’t remember it. But I knew how he felt. And after a while I kinda got my breath and I says, ‘I know, Wilf,’ I says, ‘you jist got to go.’ I couldn’t do anything else, could I?”

“No, you did right,” Ellen burst out, “and we are proud of him and of you too. You’re a soldier’s wife, Annie!”

The wife’s heart was uppermost now, and Annie had to wipe the tears away with her apron. “Poor Wilf, he didn’t want to go a bit! He was homesick all the time he was at camp, and now——”

She dried her tears and straightened up. “Artie’s that proud, you wouldn’t believe it. He’s the only one in Lairdale school whose daddy’s away at the war.”

Ellen was amazed and greatly relieved. The Pierson self-respect, that had so long lain in the dust, was floating from the mast-head. Annie and her husband could hold their own with any Laird or Armstrong on the Bay Shore. She told proudly about the farewell they gave him in the hall at Acton Hill. Ellen had already heard all about it and had contributed to it, indeed, but it bore repeating; the wonderful speeches that were made about him, and the beautiful wrist watch that was presented to him by the neighbours.

And they were getting along fine, she declared. Wise Watty and Steve looked after the place; Artie helped after school, and he would be a big help when school closed in the holidays. Oh, yes, everything would be fine if he only just came back all right, she faltered.

“You’re a grand soldier’s wife, Annie,” Ellen declared again as she rose to go and gave the pirate a final hug which he resented violently.

She found Artie and her father sitting on the platform of the old well, talking earnestly. Artie was a tall lad of twelve now, well grown, and did not in the least resemble the little waif that helped with the garden the summer Ellen had spent at the Old Home Place.

He came running down the path to meet her. She must come and see his lambs. He had two orphans and was bringing them up on the bottle. Ellen followed him out to the pasture while her father went in to the house to have a word with Annie. There were about twenty sheep and a few more lambs in a small green paddock behind the barn. Then there were the orphan twins, besides. Artie had just finished feeding them, and the bottles with their long nipples were standing on the top rail of the fence. But the lambs seemed as hungry as ever, and the sheep were moving about eating ravenously, after the manner of sheep, though they had been eating steadily all day.

“Say, lookit,” the boy said worriedly, “wouldn’t you think that twenty sheep could look after twenty-five lambs in a teeny bit of a field like that? Most of them old nannies haven’t more than one lamb to look after and nothin’ to do but eat, and jist look at them.”

Ellen watched them and had to confess that they did not seem to be model mothers, for even in this sheltered enclosure there were always at least ten lambs lost and wailing for their mothers and ten mothers rushing about calling piteously for their children. There was much running to and fro and wild-eyed searching; then rapturous reunions, with the prodigal burrowing into his mother’s side, gulping his refreshment and twitching his little tail happily after the terrible separation.

Artie and Ellen sat on the fence and watched, the shepherd very much disgusted with his sheep. “I never saw anything like them for losin’ theirselves if they no more than turn around,” he complained reasonably.

Ellen looked at him lovingly. “You’re growing up, Artie,” she cried. “Remember the summer you and I worked here, and I called you the Artful Dodger?”

He laughed in delight. “Say that was fun! And I called Mrs. Wallace ‘Mrs. Reilly.’ I was only a kid, then.”

“And now you’re growing up!”

“That’s what Mr. Carruthers was saying,” Artie said proudly. “Now that my dad is a soldier, he says I’m the man o’ the family. We had a long talk,” he added shyly, but importantly.

Ellen knew. Somehow her father had a way of getting into the thoughts and ambitions of youth. It was his deep sympathy.

“Oh, lookit! Lookit! Look at the twins!” The boy was shouting. There was a steep little grassy knoll in the centre of the field and the lambs had picked it out for a game of King-of-My-Castle. One small leggy champion had gone scrambling and leaping to the top and was standing defying all rivals. He was immediately challenged by the twins, who managed to gain the height, and a battle ensued between little woolly heads. Then up came two more champions. The twins were immediately hurled down the steep, and a new usurper danced and capered in their place. But no one held power for long undisputed, and once there were at least five struggling for the place of honour. Suddenly a new impulse seized them. They flung themselves head downwards from the eminence for which they had so lately struggled, landing on top of the milling aspirants below, and the whole flock whirled and set off towards the barn in a mad stampede. As soon as they had gained that objective they whisked about and came tearing back like a charge of miniature cavalry, their tiny hoofs beating a sharp tattoo on the ground. Next they put on a Wild West rodeo, with small bucking bronchos dancing and leaping straight into the air. Some strange electric shock would send one straight up above the flock, another would writhe convulsively while he was still aloft, others flung themselves from side to side in agonies of delight. Then all would start off again on a desperate race for life, little heels flung high above heads, little tails flying in a mad ecstasy of youth and springtime.

Ellen sat in her grand-stand seat, laughing, while the boy, as showman, leaped and shouted and called her attention to this one and that lest she miss any of the fine points.

“They’re crazy!” he cried at last, when the performers had returned to a measure of sanity and were looking once more for refreshment stands. “They’re all clean crazy!”

Ellen had to return to the house to have another look at Bobby, and at last the visitors left reluctantly. As they drove home between the rows of blossoming cherry trees, she could see that her father was very happy.

“I must write to my old friend David Laird in the west and tell him about Annie. This was David’s old home and wouldn’t he be happy to know there was such a fine representative of the family at the Old Home Place. Yes, I’ll write to David tonight. It’s great to be a minister, Nellie. Yes, it’s a high calling.”

And his daughter bowed her head in remorse, remembering that she had dared to mention his leaving this high calling.