“Oh! if father were only himself, it would be all right. I wish I knew what was to be done.”
“First thing you do is to go back to Joe M’Clean’s. He’s not going to begrutch ye a place to sleep and a bit to eat. Both you and yer father airn it. Ye work hard, an’ we’ve a right to help each other in this country; if we didn’t, some of us would have a poor show.” So Agnes agreed to accept this advice and wait for time to bring about some plan for the future. She remained with the Hunters that night, and the next day saw her back again with the M’Cleans to whom she told her story. But to her father she said nothing. He would be bewildered in trying to puzzle out the facts and could do nothing to help her.
“I think ye’ll juist have to let the matter go, Agnes,” Joseph M’Clean told her. “I’m no so sure but the eldest son doesn’t get the estate by right of the law of primogeniture, and there’s no use fightin’ when it’s not necessary. If your grandfather had made a will, leavin’ his property to your mother, that would be another thing. Juist let it rest, lass, and bide here till we can think out what is best for ye.”
So Agnes submitted, and though she chafed under the long delay, she was very grateful to these good friends who were so anxious for her welfare and that of her father. It was quite true that she earned her board, for she worked with the others and gave a hand wherever there was a need, indoors or out, and her father did likewise, so that the M’Clean clearing soon became a very habitable place.
CHAPTER V
POLLY
But it was not long before an event occurred which decided Agnes to make other plans. All through the winter she had been content to stay with her father at the new home of the M’Cleans, but as spring was nearing, the desire was strong upon her to possess the home to which her mother and the children should come. Her father, quiet and indifferent, worked steadily at whatever came to hand; but he rarely spoke, and if asked to give an opinion, looked bewildered and helpless. “Will he always be so?” thought Agnes, “and must we stay on this way month after month?” Then one day appeared Polly O’Neill.
Jeanie and Agnes were busy in the garden getting it ready for the first crop of vegetables, when through the trees which fringed the river they saw some one coming, and a voice called: “Joe M’Clean! Jeanie! Nancy! Are you all there?”
“It sounds like Polly O’Neill,” cried Agnes, dropping her hoe. Jeanie followed her example, and the two ran down the little path leading to the river. “It’s Polly herself and the children!” cried Agnes.
“Faith, then, it is,” came the reply from the approaching figure, who, with a child under each arm and two at her heels, was making her way toward them.