“It is Hilda who is the clever one,” said Bertha modestly, “and Anne is very nice-looking, but I have neither beauty nor brains.”
Mrs. Ellis leaned back with her armful of babies and surveyed her young cousin critically. Then she said, with her head held a little on one side: “You are certainly not plain, or, in other words, ugly; and I should say that in a year or two you will probably be rather nice-looking in a quiet, distinguished sort of way. Anne, of course, is downright handsome, but she was always good-looking, even as a child. Hilda is smart and clever, but she is not a genius, though she will make her way in the world, because she is careful and painstaking. She has also a great deal of tact, which, after all, goes further than genius.”
“How well you know them both!” cried Bertha, and half against her will, for at this stage she did not even want to be happy. A feeling of home peace stole into her heart, and she felt that however much she might detest the flat monotony of the prairie, or feel the irksomeness of that little house packed with noisy, crying babies, she could not be wholly unhappy where Grace was.
“Of course, I know them well. Think how your home was my home, and your people were my people,” said Mrs. Ellis. “It was a very dear home, too. But here am I talking and talking, while I have never showed you your room. I am so very sorry, dear, that we could not give you a room to yourself, and I have made Tom promise that he will build a room on at one end next summer, between seeding and harvest, so that you may have a little spot quite to yourself; but until then I am afraid that you will have to put up with Dicky and Molly as room mates.”
Bertha’s heart went right down into her boots as she followed Grace into the smaller of the two bedrooms, which was all that the house contained. She had expected, at the very least, to have a room to herself, and to know that never for one hour in the twenty-four could she be sure of uninvaded privacy was a blow indeed. But it had to be borne, and for the sake of the kind eyes that were on her she bravely hid the trouble, so that Grace, shrewd though she was, did not guess it.
Bertha had not expected Grace to be so kind. It was almost disappointing, in fact, for she had strung herself up to the pitch of heroic self-sacrifice, and lo! there was nothing in the way of sacrifice demanded of her, except perhaps in the matter of not having a bedroom to herself. Even that was rather an advantage than otherwise, if she had but known it, for she was thus unconsciously put upon her honour in the matter of keeping the little chamber tidy, and since habit stands for so much, she was effectually cured of the shocking untidiness which had been such a bone of contention in the old days between herself and her sisters.
But she suffered in those long weeks of winter as she had never suffered in her life before. The bare ugliness of the house and barn was a positive pain to her eyes, which simply ached to look on things of beauty. Then there was nothing in the dead level of the prairie to rest the eyes. From the time she arrived at Duck Flats, in early November, until late in April, it was white from one horizon to the other, and she was forced into the continual wearing of tinted glasses to save herself from going blind with the glare. She grew to hate the snow as she had never hated it before, and one day she broke down in childish crying over a little branch of an evergreen shrub which Tom Ellis had brought from Rownton.
“Oh, please forgive me; I did not mean to be so silly!” she exclaimed, when Grace chanced to find her in tears.
“My dear, I have cried over the bare ugliness of it all too often not to be able to sympathize with anyone else. But it is strange how that passes off, and one grows to find a beauty even in the flat monotony, at least I have found it so,” said Mrs. Ellis, with a rapt look, which poor Bertha could not understand or in any way appreciate.
“That is because you are content with your home and your children; they are your world, and you do not want anything else!” she cried. “But with me it is different, and I feel as if I would give almost everything that I possess for the sight of a tree, or a hill, or a bit of rock-bound shore. I have loved beautiful things all my life, and especially have I loved beautiful scenery, and this is worse—far worse—than I ever dreamed it would be.”