Mrs. Uncle Life found the Leader of the Team in her Bed
The children are looking forward to Christmas and are already writing letters to Santa Claus, which are handed to me with great secrecy to mail to him. I once watched the little ones playing at Christmas with an old stump of a bush to which they attached twigs as gifts and gravely distributed them to one another. When I saw one mite handing a dead twig to a smaller edition of himself, and announcing in a lordly fashion that it was a PIANO, I realized what Father Christmas was expected to be able to produce.
November 1
My world is transformed into fairyland. Light snow has fallen during the night, and every "starigan," every patch of "tuckamore" is "decked in sparkling raiment white." As I was dressing I looked out of my window, and for the first time in my life saw a dog team and komatik passing.
The day was full of adventure. For the children the snow meant only rejoicing; but as the highway was as slippery as glass, and the older folk had not yet got their "winter legs," there were many minor casualties. Mrs. Uncle Life, aged seventy and small and spherical, solved the problem of the hills by sitting down and sliding. She commended the method to me, saying that it served very well on week days, but was lamentably detrimental to her Sunday best.
Ananias is developing fast and bids fair to rival Topsy. He has a mania for eating anything and everything, and what he cannot eat, he destroys. Within the past few weeks he has swallowed the arm of his Teddy bear, half a cake of soap, and a tube of tooth-paste. He has also bitten through two new hot-water bottles. During the short time he has been here he has broken more windows than any other child in the Home. If he thinks politeness will save the day, he says in the sweetest way possible, "Excuse me, Teacher, for doing it"; but if he sees by my face that retribution is swift and sure, he says in the most pathetic of tones, "Teacher, I have a pain."
"Teacher, I have a pain"
I must make you acquainted with our "Yoho." Every well-regulated fishing village has one, but we have to thank our neighbour, the Eskimo, for the picturesque name. In our more prosaic parlance it is plain "ghost." Many years ago when the Mission was in need of a building in which to accommodate some of its workers, it purchased a house belonging to a local trader by the name of Isaac Spouseworthy. This made an admirable Guest House; but it has since fallen into disuse for its original purpose, and is being employed as a temporary repository for the clothing sent for the poor, till the fine new storehouse shall have been built. This old Guest House has been selected by our local apparition as a place of visitation. It is affirmed, on the incontrovertible testimony of the Prophet and no inconsiderable following, that the spirit returns of an evening to the old house he built forty years ago, to wander through the familiar rooms. The villagers see lights there nightly; and though all our investigation has failed to reveal any presence (barring the rats), bodily or otherwise, the bravest of them would hesitate many a long minute before he would enter the haunted spot after nightfall. Rumour has it that the Guest House is built on the site of an old French cemetery. Our "irrepressible Ike" therefore cannot lack for society, though how congenial it is cannot be determined. Judging from the records of the ceaseless rows between the French and English on Le Petit Nord, there must be some lively nights in ghostland.