What's a' the steer,
Jamie has landed, and soon he will be here."
She had a soft sweet voice. How long since she had sung with that gayety. True, she had been ill, and now she was well again, and Jamie had come home. But grandad had taken him off, and that somehow rankled in the child's heart.
She stood by the window, uncertainly. There were only two small windows in the large room that were of glass, for glass was costly. Another much larger had board shutters, closed tightly, and a blanket hung over it to keep out the cold. They called it the summer window. One looked over to the other house and Daffodil was there.
"I wouldn't go over if I were you," said her mother. "It is very wet. Grandad might have carried you, but he hardly knows whether he's on his head or his heels."
"He'd look very funny on his head. What makes him so glad? He was angry about—if that great general hadn't—I can't say the long word, father couldn't have come home."
She turned a very puzzled face to her mother.
"There might have been a big battle;" and the mother shuddered. "Oh, grandad will be as glad as the rest of us presently that we have a country. Now we can begin to live."
It was all very strange to her small mind. The sun was making rivulets through the snow, and the great white unbroken sheets sparkled with iridescent lights. Out beyond there was the Fort; she could see figures moving to and fro. Everything seemed so strange to her. And a country of one's own! Would the farms be larger, and, if England was beaten, what would become of it? Would they, our people, go over and take what they wanted? Would they drive the people away as they did the Indians?