Gertrude Lorimer was no exception, and she had groaned fully as much as her predecessors in office over the boredom of life at Bratley.
But she was in her second year now, and hoping for speedy promotion, more especially as her duty had been so thoroughly done, that she had never been reprimanded for any sort of neglect.
She was leaning over the slab where her instrument was fixed, tidying books and papers on the shelf above. The September morning was warm and sunny, while Gertrude’s mood was of the happiest, for a holiday of a very special sort was in prospect, and she was putting the office in nice order for the deputy, who was to arrive by the noon train to supply her place for a fortnight.
Her holiday was to be spent in New Westminster, and the thought of two weeks in a real city with business blocks, river steamboats, trams, and all the other luxuries of civilization compensated Gertrude for not going home this fall.
Lorimer’s Clearing, where her people lived, was a lonely farmstead lying almost close to the American frontier, a difficult journey from Bratley, which took a whole day to perform.
Gertrude had suffered many a fit of home sickness since she had been at Bratley, for she was one of those girls to whom home is everything, and neither by nature nor training was she fitted to stand alone.
But one could not see the world at Lorimer’s Clearing, so the summer holiday this year was to be spent in the city, with a view to enlarging her understanding, and as she was to stay with a sister of her father’s who lived at New Westminster, she would still be among her own kinsfolk.
Presently, in through the open door of the telegraph office came a stout, bustling woman, with a cast in her eye, who held up her hands in amazement at Gertrude’s activity.
“Well, Miss Lorimer, if you don’t just beat everything; turning the place inside out, as if it was regular spring-cleaning time instead of a fall holiday!”
“Oh, I’m only having a dust down, Mrs. Nichols. I could not leave the place in a muddle for my deputy, or I should deserve that she, in her turn, would leave it so for me,” Gertrude said, as she flourished her duster along the high shelf, raising a great dust.