“Poor little girl!” murmured Grace, patting her in a soothing fashion; then she said hopefully, “Do you know, Bertha, I should not be at all surprised if this yearning of yours for beautiful things wakes up the sleeping soul that is in you.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Bertha, in wide-eyed astonishment. She had always imagined that her soul was extremely wideawake; indeed, it had always seemed too much awake for her to do the practical things which everyday life demanded of her.
“I mean that no one has seen the best of you yet, and that you do not even know yourself what is in you. I believe that you are going to surprise us all some day, and the very thing to bring out the best that is in you is this same horrid monotony, as you call it.”
“In what way do you expect me to surprise you?” asked Bertha, pausing in the sewing she was doing but indifferently well and looking at Grace, while a thrill of hope quivered in her heart, for when people expected anything of her, she mostly found that she could rise to it.
“Would it be a surprise if we knew?” demanded Grace, with a laugh. “I expect that it will be a surprise to you when it comes.”
CHAPTER VIII
Great Expectations
Spring was coming. The feel of it was in the air, and though howling winds and driving rains swept over the plain, while the earth was like a quag on Duck Flats, everyone remarked how fine the weather was, which meant what a welcome change it was after months on months of snow, of frost, and of winds so keen that they seemed to scorch and sear the skin. Bertha sang about her work in the mornings now; it was sheer gladness of heart, because the white covering had gone from the ground and the brown earth was showing once again. The day that the first plough was put into the ground was like a festival, and then followed weeks of such strenuous labour, that there was scarcely time to get through the allotted toil between sunrise and sunset, and they all went to bed to fall at once into dreamless sleep until morning came again.
She had a salary now, just the money that Grace would have paid to a hired help, and the feeling of independence which it gave her ministered not a little to her happiness and content. But the real fount and spring of her happiness lay in the fact that she had begun to write, and that already, young though she was, the sweet of a tiny success had come to her.
By the advice of Grace she had let poetry severely alone. There was no demand for it, and however fond of writing poetry people might be, they rarely cared to read much of it; there was not absorbing interest enough in it. So Bertha had tried her prentice hand upon a short story, and then had gone almost delirious with joy when it was accepted and paid for. But not a word did she say in her letters to Hilda or to Anne of the good thing which had come into her life. It would be time enough for that when she had done something bigger, and all her hopes were centred now on having a book published. If only she could manage that, it would serve as something to show for her labour. So she thought of it by day and dreamed of it at night, while little by little, like the building of a house, the story took on form and shape in her brain.
It was so strange to her to have someone to whom she could talk of her hopes and aspirations. She would never have dreamed of talking to her own sisters as she talked to Grace. They would have laughed at her, and would have said to each other in pitying tones, “If only Bertha were more practical and did not dream so much, what a good thing it would be!”