Shenac's Work at Home. Margaret M. Robertson
it, Jane MacIvor—spoken of as a very beautiful woman (the Gaelic spelling is Sinec); but at this time I do not think it ever came into the mind of anybody to think whether she was beautiful or not. She had one attribute of beauty—perfect health. There never bloomed among the Scottish hills, which her father and mother only just remembered, roses and lilies more fresh and fair than bloomed on the happy face of Shenac, and her curls of golden brown were the admiration and envy of her dark haired cousins. They called little Flora a beauty, and a rose, and a precious darling; but of Shenac they said she was bright and good, and very helpful for a girl of her age; and her brother Hamish thought her the best girl in the world—indeed, quite without a fault, which was very far from being true.
For Shenac had plenty of faults. She had a quick, hot temper, which, when roused, caused her to say many things which she ought not to have said. Hamish thought all those sharp words were quite atoned for by Shenac’s quick and earnest repentance, but there is a sense in which it is true that hasty and unkind words can never be unsaid.
Shenac liked her own way too in all things. This did not often make trouble, however; for she had learned her mother’s household ways, and, indeed, had wonderful taste and talent for these matters. Being the only daughter of the house, except little Flora, and her mother not being very strong, Shenac had less to do in the fields than her cousins, and was busy and happy in the house, except in harvest-time, when even the little lads, her brothers, were expected to do their part there.
Hamish and Shenac were very much alike, as twins very often are—that is, they were both fair, and had the same-coloured hair and eyes. But, while Shenac was rosy and strong, the very picture of health, her brother was thin and pale, and often of late there had been a look of pain on his face that it made his mother’s heart ache to see. They were all in all to each other—Shenac and Hamish. They missed Lewis less on this account, and they knew very little of the troubles that so often made their father and mother anxious; and the first months of winter passed happily over them after Lewis went away.
Christmas passed, and the new year came in. A few more pleasant weeks went by, and then there came terrible tidings to the house of Angus Bhan. Far away, on one of the rapids of the Grand River, a boat had been overturned. Three young men had been lost under the ice. The body of one had been recovered: it was the body of Lewis MacIvor.
“We should be thankful that we can at least bring him home,” said Angus Bhan to his wife, while she made preparations for his sad journey. But he said it with very pale, trembling lips, and his wife struggled to restrain the great burst of weeping that threatened to have way, that he might have the comfort of thinking that she was bearing her trouble well. But when she was left alone all these sad days of waiting, she was ready to say, in the bitterness of her heart, that there was no sorrow like her sorrow. One son was a wanderer, another was dead, and on the face of the dearly-beloved Hamish was settling the look of habitual suffering, so painful to see. Her cup of sorrow was full to the brim, she declared, but she knew not what she said.
For, when a few days had passed, there were brought home for burial two dead bodies instead of one. Her husband was no more. He had nearly accomplished his sorrowful errand, when death overtook him. He had complained to the friend who was with him of feeling cold, and had left the sleigh to walk a mile or two to warm himself. They waited in vain for him at the next resting-place, and when they went back to look for him they found him lying with his face in the snow, quite dead. He had not died from cold, the doctor said, but from heart-disease, and probably without suffering; and this comfort the bereaved widow tried to take to herself.
But her cup of sorrow was not full yet. The very night before the burial was to be, the house caught fire and burned to the ground. It was with difficulty that the few neighbours who gathered in time to help could save the closed coffins from the flames; and it seemed a small matter, at the time, that nearly all their household stuff was lost.
The mother’s cup did seem full now. I do not think that the coming of any trouble, however great, could at this time have added to her grief. She had striven to be submissive under the repeated strokes that had fallen upon her, but the horrors of that night were too much for her, weakened as she was by sorrow. For a time she was quite distracted, heeding little the kind efforts of her neighbours to alleviate her distress and the distress of her children. All that kind hearts and willing hands could do was done for them. The log house which their grandfather had built still stood. It was repaired, and filled with gifts from every family in the neighbourhood, and the widow and her children found refuge there.
“Oh, what a sad beginning for a story!” I think some of my young readers may say, in tones of disappointment. It is indeed a sad beginning, but every sorrowful word is true. Every day there are just such sorrowful events happening in the world, though it is not often that trouble falls so heavily at once on any household. I might have left all this out of my story; but then no one could have understood so well the nature of the work that fell to Shenac, or have known the difficulties she had to overcome in trying to do it well.
Chapter Two.
It was May-day. Oftentimes in the northern country this month is ushered in by drizzling rain, or even by the falling snow; but this year brought a May-day worthy of the name—clear, mild, and balmy. There was not a cloud in all the sky, nor wind enough to stir the catkins hanging close over the waters of the creek. The last days of April had been warm and bright, and there was a tender green on the low-lying fields, and on the poplars that fringed the wood; and the boughs of the maple-trees in the sugar-bush looked purple and brown over the great grey trunks.
There is never a May-day when some flowers cannot be found beneath these trees, and in the warm hollows along the margin of the creek; but this year there were more than a few. Besides the pale little “spring flower,” which hardly waits for the snow to go away before it shows itself, there were daffodils and anemones and wake-robins, and from the lapful which little Flora MacIvor sat holding on the bank close beside the great willow peeped forth violets, blue and white. There were lady-slippers too somewhere not far away, Flora was sure, if only Dan or Hughie could be persuaded to look for them a little farther down the creek, in the damp ground under the cedars, where she had promised her mother she would not go.
But the lads had something else to do than to look for flowers for Flora. Down the creek, which was broad and full because of the melting snow, a number of great cedar chips were floating. Past the foot-bridge, and past the eddy by the great rock, and over the pool into which the creek widened by the old ashery, the mimic fleet sailed safely; while the lads shouted and ran, and strove by the help of long sticks to pilot them all into the little cove by the willow where little Flora was sitting, till even the flower-loving little maiden forgot her treasures, and grew excited like the rest.
You would never have thought, looking at those bright faces, that heavy trouble had been in their home for months. Listening to their merry, voices, you would never have imagined that there were, in some hearts that loved them, grave doubts whether for the future they were to have a home together or no. But so it was.
Higher up the bank, where the old ashery used to stand, Shenac and Hamish were sitting. The triumphant shout with which the last and largest of the boats was landed, startled them out of the silence in which they had been musing, and the girl said sadly—
“Children forget so soon!”
Hamish made no answer. He was not watching the little sailors. His face was quite turned away from them, and looked gloomy and troubled enough. The girl watched a moment anxiously; and then turning her eyes where his had been for some time resting, she cried passionately—
“I wish a fire would break out and burn it to ashes, every stick!”
“What would be the good of that? Angus Dhu would put it all up again,” said Hamish bitterly. “He might save himself the trouble, though. He means to have all the land shortly.”
They were watching the progress of a fence of great cedar rails which three