Bread and pork, with no stint of tea, and a bit of molasses for sweetening, together with such game as he might kill, sat a table that to Thomas Angus and his family was bountiful and varied enough, if not luxurious. There were no potatoes or other vegetables, to be sure, for gardens do not thrive in this far northern land; but they did not mind that, for they had never eaten vegetables. We do not miss what we have never had, and the more we have the more we demand. And so it was that Thomas Angus and his family were happy and content enough with what to you and me would have been privation.
“’Tis a wonderful fine livin’ we has here,” said Thomas, “and we’re thankful to th’ Lard for providin’ it.”
Mrs. Angus had been dead these five years. Her grave, marked by a rude wooden slab, was in a little fenced-in clearing behind the house. Her death was the greatest sorrow that had ever visited the Anguses. Thomas dug the grave himself, as a last service to his wife, and when he and the neighbors lowered Mrs. Angus into her deep, cold bed, and covered her with frozen clods of earth, and he and the mourning children returned to the empty cabin, he comforted them with the philosophy of his simple Christian faith.
“’Tis the Lard’s will,” he said. “The work He had for Mother to do on earth was ended, and He called her away. ’Tis a bit hard on us that’s left behind, and we’ll be missin’ her sore, but we’ll bear un without complaint because ’tis the Lard’s will. We mustn’t forget—though we’ll be like to forget sometimes—that Mother’s still livin’. ’Twas only the body that she was through usin’ that we buried out there. Who can know but she may be right with us now, though we can’t see her? And maybe she’s seein’ us all the time, and knowin’ all we does and talks about.”
Margaret, then a little maid of twelve, took her mother’s place as housekeeper, and bravely did her best to mother the boys. In these five years she had grown into a handsome, rosy-cheeked lass of seventeen, and as capable and fine a housekeeper as you could find on the whole Labrador.
David and Andy, too, had developed with the years from energetic small boys into broad-shouldered, bronze-faced, brawny lads. David, nearly sixteen, and Andy, fourteen, lent a hand at anything that was to be done indoors and out. They kept the water barrel filled from Roaring Brook, they helped cut the firewood and haul it with the dogs, and sawed and split it into proper size for the big box stove. In summer they did their part at the salmon and trout fishing and in winter they kept the house supplied with partridges and rabbits and other small game. In Labrador every one must do his part, and lads learn early to bear their share of the responsibilities of life, and so it was with David and Andy. And adventures, too, they had, for in that brave land adventures come often enough.
Jamie, the youngest of the family, was ten, and as cheerful and lusty and fine a little lad as ever lived. But Jamie’s sight was failing.
“They’s a smoke in the house,” said Jamie when he awoke one morning.
“They’s no smoke in the house,” protested Andy.